Heart In Wire
by bravevulnerability
Summary: 'He doesn't truly know what they are – broken up, on a break, straddling the line between the two. All he really knows is that they can't be over.' A series of tumblr prompt fills with the common theme of being a 'post break-up AU'.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: If you follow me on tumblr, you may have seen that I reblogged a list of prompts with the common theme of each idea being a 'post break-up AU'. I filled a total of 19 and I apologize if you've already read these, but I hope that you don't mind seeing them again. And if this is your first time coming across this series, I truly hope you enjoy it!**

* * *

 _"I literally can't sleep alone anymore so i've shown up at your door in my pajamas, can we have one more nap together, please?"_

* * *

He opens the door to see her on the other side, his heart immediately leaping into his throat, but Kate looks exhausted, drained and devoid of the myriad of emotions he had recently evoked, overwhelmed her with.

"Beckett," he addresses her, as if it's a completely normal occurrence for her to show up on his doorstep at two in the morning in her nighttime attire of leggings and an oversized t-shirt a week after their breakup.

She meets his gaze with hollow eyes, bare of makeup and allowing him to see the vivid smears of purple beneath as she shakes her head.

"I'm so tired, Castle," she rasps and his mangled heart twists painfully, breaks a little more.

He doesn't ask why, doesn't ask her to elaborate; he doesn't speak at all. Castle steps back and holds the door open wider for her to come inside. He's tired too, unable to sleep without her in his bed, without the heat of her body and the cadence of her breathing beside him, unable to find rest when their relationship - a relationship they had worked so hard and fought so long to have - is in shambles.

Kate doesn't say any more, shuffling past him and straight in the direction of his bedroom. He follows her wordlessly, watches her with the sharp ache in his chest throbbing in time with his heartbeat as she drops her coat on the couch in his office, steps out of her shoes in the bedroom doorway, so at home here all over again. But she glances over her shoulder to him when he fails to join her once she reaches the edge of his bed.

"Rick," she sighs, her exhausted eyes hooking his, reeling him towards her without his consent. "Please."

He reaches her in three long strides, waits for her to climb onto the mattress and settle on what had been her side before he joins her. Rick descends to lie on his back and the moment his head hits the pillow, her body is draping at his side and his lungs are seizing in his chest.

"Kate," he croaks, but fails to stop the curl of her leg between his, the mold of her body along his side, curves and bones all fitting back into place against him, back where they belong.

The circle of his arm around her shoulders is instinctive, unstoppable, like the fall of her head to his chest, her cheek atop his heart and her hand fisted in his t-shirt.

"I can't sleep," she admits on a sigh and he holds her tighter, presses her in closer, tries not to think about how much he's missed her. "I used to love sleeping alone, but then you just… fuck, you ruined me, Castle."

And he knows that she's no longer talking solely about her sleeping habits, that the hitch in her breathing and the brokenness of her words isn't from her lack of rest.

It had been just over a month, a single month since she had taken him up on his offer for a movie marathon, since he had kissed her goodnight at his front door, since a 'goodnight' had quickly turned into a 'good morning'. He'd had a mere three weeks with her before secrets had torn them apart again, since she discovered that damn murder board with her face plastered in the middle of it all, since she had demanded he take it down and he'd refused. Since she had told him they were really over this time and stormed out of his loft.

He doesn't truly know what they are – broken up, on a break, straddling the line between the two. All he really knows is that they can't be over, not when she's back in his bed, enveloped in his arms, making it quite apparent that she wants this to end just as much as he does.

"You ruined me too," he murmurs into her hair, pressing his lips to her crown, inhaling the scent of her shampoo. "All we seem to do. Ruin each other."

Kate releases another sigh, another weary sound, and turns her face up to bury in the cove of his neck.

"That's not true," she whispers, her eyes blinking too quickly against the underside of his jaw, her throat working hard against his clavicle. "It's just - all we're doing right now."

Castle closes his eyes, slips one of his hands into her hair and cradles her skull in his palm.

"Kate, I'm-"

"Not right now, not tonight," she rasps, staining a kiss to his throat.

Rick purses his lips, but relents, compromises. "Tomorrow?" he tries instead, feeling her tense before the breath, the fight, shudders out of her. "Please, Kate, I can't do this anymore."

 _I love you too much to keep going like this._

"Me neither," she confesses, flattening her palm across his sternum, splaying her fingers wide over his chest. "Tomorrow. Tonight, can we just-"

"Yes," he murmurs, planting another kiss to the top of her head, shifting his body ever so slightly to perfect the slot of her frame into his. "Tonight, just sleep, Kate."

An exhale, one he's certain is of relief, rushes out of her, pools in the hollow of his throat where the heat of her breath washes over, and she nods, begins to drift in his arms.

"You too. Sleep with me, Rick."

He's so tired, so grateful just to have her back, only if for a night, that he doesn't even fathom making a joke of her words, following them up with an innuendo. He only follows their true meaning, follows her into the desperate need for slumber.


	2. Chapter 2

_"you're pretending we're still together because my relatives will disprove of the break up so you're being all sweet it's reminding me of why i fell in love with you in the first place."_

* * *

Her palm sweats as the phone rings and she tightens her grip on the device to keep it from slipping, stares out into the sea of city lights outside her window and takes a deep breath before he picks up, because she knows he'll pick up.

"Kate?"

Her breath catches at the sound of her first name in his mouth again. They've been on amicable terms since she had ended things only a couple of weeks ago, after the disastrous dinner with their parents, after it had struck her like lightning how doomed the two of them had been from the start.

 _We don't make sense on paper, maybe we just don't make sense at all._

 _But Beckett, we don't live our lives on paper, we-_

 _You said it yourself, Rick. We're from different worlds and maybe they never should have collided._

He had stopped coming to the precinct, but he didn't stop bringing her coffee when he reappeared after a week long absence, didn't stop shooting her smiles and hopeful looks with his eyes that destroy her each time, declaring that he wasn't giving up, that they would always make sense to him. But she hadn't agreed, so here they were, stuck in the same holding pattern as before.

"Hey, Castle," she answers on a sigh, scraping her fingers through her hair in an attempt to soothe the building headache beating through her skull. "I'm sorry to bother you like this-"

"You never bother me," he assures her, his voice too soft, and Beckett bites her bottom lip hard enough for the sparks of physical pain to outshine the misery bleeding from her chest.

She misses him, misses the budding relationship they had been tending to together, the late night talks in his bed after a round (or two, sometimes three) of fantastic sex, coffee in the morning in his kitchen, wine at night on his couch. She misses him so badly, it makes her wonder if the only time she'd actually been kidding herself was when she'd decided to break things off with him

"Everything okay?" he prompts at her unplanned pause and Kate nods before remembering, like an idiot, that he can't see her.

"Yeah, fine, I just - you know how your mom and my dad kind of got into it about baseball during that dinner a few weeks ago?" she begins, feeling ridiculous, hating that she has to bring up the cringe-worthy meal at all.

Castle chuckles, the sound too weary for her liking. "How could I forget?"

"Well, my dad bought tickets to the next Yankees game and he thought - he told me he thought it would be the perfect opportunity to show you the game and how great it can be, so he purchased tickets for the three of us," she explains, pacing in her living room now, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment as she stumbles through the words. "And I know I should have told him that we aren't together anymore and that it wasn't a good idea, but he was just so excited and I just – I didn't know how to-"

"Kate." Her lips purse and her feet slow to a stop in front of her coffee table. "I was… maybe it's stupid of me, but I actually thought we'd be back together by now."

Her hand rises to her chest, claws into the space between her breasts where her healed gunshot wound throbs like a living thing, her scar tight, setting fire to her insides. "Castle-"

"And this doesn't mean I'm giving up on that idea. I love you, that hasn't changed." Kate presses her knuckles to the ridge of bone above her brow, squeezes her eyes shut to hold back the sudden spring of tears. "But obviously, at the moment, we aren't together and I get that telling your dad isn't an easy task. So if you want to prolong that a little while, until after this game, then we'll do that. We'll all go to the game, just pretend to still be together-"

"Rick, we can't just-"

"Don't worry, we won't - we'll just hold hands, be as platonic as possible, okay? Nothing you're not comfortable with," he promises her, but that's not – that isn't even what she's worried about. "We'll enjoy the game with your father and that'll be all, Kate. No big deal."

"I don't want to make you do this."

Castle huffs at her, an attempt at a laugh that falls flat, much like his smiles most days. "Spending a day with you at a baseball game? You hardly have to coerce me here, Beckett."

Her returning breath of laughter is just as broken.

"Okay, yeah. We'll make it work. I - thank you, Castle."

"Of course," he answers automatically and her guilt blooms brighter, just a breath away from eating her alive. "When's the game?"

"This Saturday. I was going to pick up my dad on the way, but you can meet us there if you want?"

"Shouldn't I be with you when you pick up your dad? I mean, if we were still together, we'd-"

"Fine," she sighs, digging her fingers into the back of her neck. "I'll pick you up first."

She can practically hear his first real smile over the phone.

"It's a date."

* * *

Beckett had called to inform him about the baseball game on Monday night and he spends the entire week bubbling with excitement, beaming at her every morning when he deposits her cup of coffee to her desk, eliciting intrigued glances from the boys and a narrowed gaze from Lanie every time they have to head down to the morgue. On Saturday morning, she waits outside for him in her dad's car, changing plans and picking up her father first, forcing smiles through the usual small talk, the polite questions about work and Castle, attempting to ignore how wrong it feels to lie to her father like this.

But it's too late to come clean when Rick comes bounding out of his building, the charming grin already in place as she gets out to greet him.

"Hey, going okay so far?" he inquires, his hands on her waist causing her to stiffen, but his lips only touch her cheek, cordially skimming the bone, closer than he's been in too long.

"Yeah, did you… order a Yankees shirt online?" she asks with her lips twitching in the corners as she assesses his attire, but Castle merely shrugs, offers her that crooked smile she's always adored.

"Maybe. Wanted to fit in."

Kate rolls her eyes and steps back to open the back door for him before returning to the driver's side of the vehicle, sliding into the front seat to hear her dad and Rick already exchanging pleasantries.

Rick is all too good at getting along with her dad, he always has been, and she spends the majority of their drive to the Bronx simply listening, suppressing smirks and chuckles at their exchanges. By the time they arrive at the stadium, Castle is giddy with anticipation for his first baseball game, snagging her fingers and squeezing her hand once they've parked and start to cross the street.

During the game, she sits between the two men, bumping shoulders with her dad and occasionally leaning into Castle's side without realizing what she's doing until it's too late. To his credit, Rick does his best to follow the game, to understand it, asking her father questions over her head to avoid disrupting her view of the field, his hand on her knee a pleasant weight and the cheers he emits when their team scores eliciting true joy in his eyes. He's having such a good time with her, with her dad, and it makes her wish this day never has to end.

"You sure you don't want help, son?" Jim asks when Castle rises to retrieve snacks and beverages in the middle of an inning while the Yankees retreat to the dugout to prepare to bat, and she doesn't miss the subtle ripple of delight through his eyes at the term that slips so effortless from her father's mouth.

But Castle waves him off. "I've got it, Mr. Beckett."

"Jim," her father corrects for what has to be the third time and Rick nods as the smile quirks his lips.

"Got it, Jim."

"Hey, Castle, wait," she calls, standing from her seat to catch the sleeve of his t-shirt, draw him back before he can venture into the aisle.

Rick arches his brow, but concern breaches the bright blues of his eyes, a question blooming on his lips that she's already shaking her head to as she cups his jaw in her palm, holds him steady as she stretches on the toes of her sneakers to smear a kiss to his mouth.

The gentle brush of her kiss has his entire body going stiff against hers for a split second, but then his hands are curling at her hips and his lips are parting to capture hers, kiss her back.

"Come home with me later," she mumbles, resting her forehead to his and grinning at the split of his mouth beneath hers, letting her hand fall to his shirt and her fingers hook in the collar.

"Okay," he murmurs, brushing his thumb to the bone of her hip before beginning to pull away. "Won't be a one night kind of thing though, Kate, I can't-"

"No," she agrees, meeting his eyes beneath the shade of his baseball cap, the low roar of the fans in the stadium nonexistent in that moment, as cliché as it may sound, but it helps her realize what she had tried to deny all along.

The bubble she had been in with him had never burst, she had just left him alone in it. Until now.

"No, she repeats, releasing her grip on his shirt, but holding onto the tenderness shining in his gaze. "I want you to stay."


	3. Chapter 3

_"listen i know i can't just show up at your apartment at six in the morning but i need coffee and no one makes it like you do."_

* * *

 **A/N: AU where after 4x22, Castle really does fail to return to the precinct.**

* * *

She tries for days to emulate his skills, to mix the correct blend of ingredients, to create the perfect cup of coffee as he always did so effortlessly. But all she comes away with is the scalding kiss of steam on her skin from the biased espresso machine that works for everyone but her and the bitter taste of failure on her tongue. With an added bonus of worried looks from Ryan and Esposito each time they catch her tossing the revolting brew from her cup into the sink before storming out of the break room with frustration simmering in her veins. Nothing else, not the faint but ever present throb of heartache that is settling in to become a permanent resident within her chest, not longing for the man who caused it.

She resorts to practicing in her own apartment after a week of poor results in the precinct break room, but after countless cups of disappointment, Kate gives up. It's five in the morning and she hasn't received any calls from dispatch yet, but she hasn't slept in weeks, arriving at the Twelfth before the sun can even breach the skyline for too many days straight. And she's been fine, making it, but standing in her kitchen now in the light of daybreak, the exhaustion finally seems to hit her, striking her relentlessly. Normally, she'd bite it back, push it down, but god, she's just so tired, so sick of missing him and his damn coffee.

 _Every morning I bring you a cup of coffee just so I can see a smile on your face._

She can't remember the last time she's smiled, can't even fathom the once familiar split of her lips. He'd taken that with him too when he'd left.

Kate doesn't think, doesn't try to reason with herself as she strides for her front door, grabbing her keys, her badge, her gun, and stuffing it all into her purse while she exits her apartment. It takes all of her focus to ignore the protests echoing from her brain, to walk without stopping from Tribeca to SoHo with the company of the rising sun at her side, to follow the tug of her heart in the direction of his loft and feeling some of the tightness in her chest loosen the closer she gets.

Until she's walking into his building, riding the elevator to his floor, and knocking on his door at 6 a.m.

Her chest is so tight, she can barely breathe. Oh god, what is she doing?

Kate turns swiftly back towards the elevator, maybe she can escape before he realizes she was even hear, maybe he hadn't even heard the rap of her knuckles, spending his Saturday morning sleeping in like he always-

"Beckett?" She pauses only a step away from his now open door, unable to stop herself from turning back at the call of her name, the sound of his voice.

And it's such a bad idea to see him again, but especially at six in the morning when he's still rumpled with sleep, the strands of his hair askew, his eyes a cloudy blue still hazy from slumber, but it's the stains of purple beneath his eyes that have her heart clenching painfully, the pale, waxy quality to his skin and the lines carved deep into his face that were never there before. Frown lines.

"Morning, Castle," she murmurs, her fingers knotting nervously in front of her.

Castle glances past her, as if he expects to see company at her back, before returning his gaze to her in confusion.

"Morning?" he answers, assessing her next, his eyes filling with concern at whatever he sees, but he quickly blinks it away, swallows it down. "I - did something happen? Are you okay?"

Her mouth goes unexpectedly dry at the question, the fact that he'd ask at all.

"Yeah, I'm… no, Castle, I'm really not."

His brow creases deep, his irises shining a bright cerulean in the morning light bleeding into the hallway, illuminated with worry.

"I shouldn't have come here," she sighs, raking her fingers through her hair, wincing when they snag in a tangle. "I'm truly sorry, Castle, I should go-"

"Beckett, what do you want?" he demands, his voice firmer than she's ever heard, and her eyes startle back to his, surprised by the intense shade of dark blue boring into her.

"Coffee," she blurts, slicing over the first word that had risen to her tongue with the second. "I haven't had a good cup of coffee since you left."

"You showed up at my apartment at 6 a.m. for coffee?" he questions, not offended, not amused, and not believing her either.

Kate shrugs. "No one makes it like you do."

She expects for him to slam the door on her, not take a step back, hold the door open in invitation for her. Castle heads to his kitchen without waiting for her, though, and Kate eases the front door shut, scans the room before she follows after him.

"Are Martha and Alexis home?" she inquires while he digs through drawers, disappears into the pantry and returns with an unopened bag of coffee beans.

"No, they left for a month long tour of Europe last week," he informs her, clipped, cold, none of the pouting or dramatics he would normally display, and her heart sinks to her stomach. "Come here, Beckett. I'm going to teach you how to make it like I do."

Kate approaches warily, the preferred use of her surname not lost on her. "Teach me?"

Castle nods, arranging all of the necessities out atop the counter beside an expensive coffee machine. "So you won't need me to do it for you anymore."

Her heart finally shatters at the knowledge. This was his last goodbye to her.

"No, she argues, causing his hands to go still atop the granite. "That's not - not what I want."

Castle shifts to face her in exasperation.

"But you said-"

"You," she breathes out, staring up at him as a mixture of bewildered hope ripples through his eyes. "I don't want it without you, Castle."


	4. Chapter 4

_"we promised to stay friends but we're doing the same stuff we did when we were a couple and i don't wanna point it out because i don't want it to stop."_

* * *

 **Set early season 5.**

* * *

He lights up every time she walks through the door, feels his entire face illuminate as he pauses no matter what he's doing, his heart skipping a beat for her. It's been exactly a month since they had decided that staying friends was a better option for them, the pressure of hiding their relationship from her boss, from the entire precinct, too heavy of a weight for them to carry any longer.

He had told her he would quit, bring his time at the Twelfth, as her partner, to an end, but her eyes had rippled with agony at the idea and her lips had parted with protest.

"Look, what if we just… go back to being friends for now?" she had suggested in the living room of her apartment, her arms folded tightly across her chest and her lips in a thin, downward curve.

The 'on and off' quality to their relationship since she had returned to work after the summer had worn them both thin, elicited too many senseless fights that hurt more than they should, but there had been no solution, not when Gates is just waiting for a reason to be rid of him.

"Kate, I can't just – I can't go back to being your friend again," he had ground out, the prospect of throwing away all of the hard work they had put in to be together, all of the time and heartache to make it to where they had been then, had wrecked him – still wrecks him – but Kate had just shaken her head and crossed the room to him.

"Just until we can figure something else out," she had murmured, cupping his face in her hands, and god, he misses her touch, misses touching her. "This is ruining us, Rick. And after everything, we deserve a better shot."

He hadn't been able to argue with that, consoling himself with the knowledge that she wasn't giving up on them, wasn't choosing to put their relationship on hold because she wanted to, that he would still see her every day at work. Have her without having her.

And that is where they are now, a full month after that conversation, stuck in this bittersweet stalemate, back to a place between friends and lovers, to waiting. He is so sick of waiting.

Kate is too, impatience simmering in her gaze every time it lands on him. Just as it does tonight as she strolls into The Old Haunt with a brilliant smile already tugging at her lips.

"I should just add you to the payroll at this point," he quips when she reaches the bar he stands behind, snagging a few empty glasses left on the countertop before she joins him, like she has been for the last two weeks.

"No need, Castle," she grins, brushing against his side as she passes him by. "What friends are for."

He represses his scoff at that.

She had started showing up at the bar again a mere week after their relationship had come to its temporary end (temporary, because he refuses to even consider the idea of anything more permanent). Not long ago, whenever she would accompany him to The Old Haunt as his girlfriend, they would spend the majority of their time in his private office, but now, they spend it behind the bar together.

She helped him keep up with the orders and he glared at other men who stared at her for too long, and at first, he couldn't understand why she would want to devote her free time to halfhearted bartending. But when he had asked her about it, Kate had shrugged her shoulders, the corners of her mouth quirking somewhat shyly.

"It can be kinda relaxing, you know? And it's – you're here," she'd added without looking at him. "So, it also provides a good place for me to innocently hang out with my friend."

Castle had rolled his eyes at that last part, just like she had wanted him to, while she had smirked from behind the curtain of her hair.

The bar is never very busy, the usual crowd of patrons nursing their drinks, indulging in the solitude of corner booths, the melody of the piano or the option of the jukebox he had installed just because he loved adding to the classic vibe of the place. But despite the low volume of demand, he always manages to end up tangled up with her in the narrow strip of space behind the bar, their bodies pressed too close and the scent of her shampoo grazing his nose often too much for him to stand.

It happens tonight, of course, Castle reaching for a bottle of whiskey while Beckett is cleaning out a tray of discarded limes and cherries. He moves forward and so does she, heading in different directions but still colliding with each other, his chest brushing hers while their hips slot into place, bones bumping in familiar greeting that almost has him pouring the whiskey down his throat.

Her cheeks flush with color he can't see in the dim lighting, but Kate avoids his eyes and pops one of the untouched cherries into her mouth before she nudges him out of her way, disappears into the back while an impatient customer clears his throat.

"Hey Beckett, I have a question," he murmurs once she returns, the bar beginning to empty as the hour grows later.

Kate arches her brow in response. "Shoot."

"Can friends go see movies together?"

She sighs and bites her bottom lip, her eyes shimmering green and contemplative, her head battling with her heart he assumes.

He drifts closer before she can answer, the towel he'd thrown over his shoulder knotted nervously in his hands now. "I miss you."

Beckett huffs and bumps him with her elbow. "Castle, you see me every day at the precinct and we hang out here all the time-"

"It's not enough," he states, not meaning to sound so serious, like he's giving her an ultimatum, but he's just – it's not enough. Not this time.

Her lips part but nothing manages to come out, her eyes filling with despair and he feels the regret spill through his guts. He isn't trying to guilt her, to make her feel even worse about their current predicament; she's just as miserable as he is, he knew that, and she doesn't want to lose him, to cut their time together in half, he knew that too. If he couldn't see her at the precinct, he may hardly see her at all.

"I know," she finally confesses, her gaze scanning the room before her head drops to his shoulder. "I miss you too."

Closing time is approaching and Jimmy the piano man is lowering the lid that covers the keys of the instrument, the older man catching sight of them and offering Castle a parting nod of his head as he starts towards the exit, lingering by the classical jukebox before he goes.

The distinctive crooning of a saxophone is filling the air moments later, Jimmy already out the door and heading up the concrete steps to street level, and he immediately senses Kate hum with awareness at the sound of Coltrane playing softly in the background.

Castle turns his head to feather his lips at her temple. "Maybe giving up our partnership at the precinct is worth it if we can maintain one outside of it."

"Yeah?" she mumbles, shifting until her cheek is smudged against the rounded edge of his shoulder and her fingers are flirting with his at their sides, welcoming the embrace of his palm and the stroke of his thumb to her knuckles. "I just hate that it has to change, that we can't have both."

Rick laces an arm around her waist and draws their tangled hands upwards to rest atop his chest, coaxing Kate into facing him until he sees the amused twitch of her lips, the curve of a single eyebrow.

"Not to interrupt what is a serious conversation, but your favorite band is playing and we always danced to this one, so-"

"Then dance with me, Castle," she murmurs with her mouth still in that soft smile and her body leaning in to sway against his.

Rick splays his hand to the small of her back, molding his palm to the subtle curve of her spine while he feels Kate's arm curl around his neck, fingers dancing along his nape.

"I wish it didn't have to change either," he picks up with his lips at her ear, his voice low to match the flow of jazz music through the bar. "But when it comes down to it, I would rather be able to come home to you, have you come home to me. I'd rather be able to – to love you, Kate, than to spend all of my time wishing I could."

Their brief swaying comes to a halt as she pulls back, stares up at him with so much bleeding through her gaze, flares of gold and sparks of need glowing through her irises, spreading from her eyes to her lips before they flicker to his.

He cradles her body, the arching bow of her spine as she lifts into him, her body lapping gently at his like a soft wave, and sighs into the warm press of her mouth, the submersion of her fingers in his hair, soothing his scalp.

"I agree," she breathes out against his lips, humming when he kisses her again, their mouths fusing and his tongue stroking deep while her hips rock into his for the first time in what felt like forever, far too long. Definitely too long. "So, close up the bar," Kate whispers once he's gasping for breath, desperate for more, but she's pulling away, squeezing his hips before she leaves him standing speechless and yearning in the middle of his workspace. "And meet me in your office."


	5. Chapter 5

_"we bumped into each other in the street and you were grinning like a cocky asshole the whole time so i stalked off only to realise i'm wearing your shirt."_

* * *

Kate loosens the tie in her hair as a rare breeze blows through the stifling heat of the city, cool air kissing the damp skin of her neck and tangling through the strands as they fall around her shoulders. Summers in New York City can be brutal and today is proof of that.

It has her missing how she used to spend her summer months, weekends off and vacation time devoted to a gorgeous mansion in the Hamptons, the ocean and sand and sea breeze, the taste of salt on his skin when she lowered her mouth to-

Beckett sighs and continues her stride down the street, her iced coffee sweating out beads of cool condensation onto her hand. The heat has her missing him, but what doesn't these days?

She lifts the plastic cup to her lips, takes the straw between her teeth, only for it to fall free at her gasp when a broad shoulder collides with hers, bumps her hard enough to send the remainder of her drink sloshing upwards through the thin barrier of the lid. Kate curses as the chilled liquid splashes up, bites her lip to contain her horror as it spills all over her shirt. Her stupid, favorite shirt.

"Dammit," she growls, spinning on her heel to confront the careless asshole who apparently can't walk in a straight line or – oh. "Castle?"

Wide blue eyes stare back at her, shimmering in the unforgiving glare of the sun before they flicker down to her shirt, sparkling with surprise before a smirk – a goddamn _smirk_ – claims his lips. Grinning at her as if he hadn't shattered her heart like a sledgehammer to glass over six months ago, like he hadn't left her ragged and weeping for too many nights to count. As if he hadn't broken them.

Kate purses her lips to contain the rise of anger, the taste of bile in the back of her throat, and turns on her heel to stalk off in the opposite direction, the wrong direction, but away from him. She just needs to be away from him.

"Kate!" he calls after her, but she ignores him, tosses her ruined coffee cup into a trashcan she passes at a crosswalk.

She isn't able to avoid him for long, hears him chasing after her from a few feet behind, but in the short time she manages a decent amount of distance, she realizes _why_ he's grinning like a cocky son of a bitch, remembers why this is her favorite shirt.

"Beckett," he finally breathes from right behind her, snagging her by the arm and dragging her out of human traffic until she's pressed against the brick wall of a restaurant with Richard Castle standing in front of her. "I'm sorry, I'm – I didn't mean to offend you. I can't – it feels surreal to even see you again."

"That's your fault," she snaps, ruthless with the hurt that rages through her chest, the desperate mixture of sorrow and need swirling through his eyes, dark blue and cracking.

Castle sighs, but nods, doesn't even attempt to deny it or sugarcoat the truth. "I know. Believe me, I know."

"Have you - when did you come back?" she croaks, the knowledge that he had returned to the city with no intention of telling her is just another stab wound to the heart, but it doesn't matter anymore. She's already bled out, has nothing left to lose.

After his mother had died, Rick had spiraled, pushed everyone away, and she had thought she would be the perfect partner to get him through the loss she knew all too well, practically a pro at living with the endless ache her own mother's death had instilled within her chest. But Castle had shut her out, Alexis too, drowning in terrible grief all alone despite how many times she had tried to swim him to shore.

"I need to go away for a while," Castle had informed her the day after the funeral, looking both hollow and overwhelmed, a packed duffel at his feet.

"Okay," she'd murmured, entering the bedroom and already glancing to their shared closet. "Where do you want to go?"

"Kate," he'd sighed and Beckett had returned her gaze to meet his, felt the dread twine through her gut and twist hard. "I need to go alone. Be alone."

"But we - I'm your fiancée, we're a team. Partners, remember?" she had whispered, gripping his hands tightly in hers, but Castle had shaken his head. "Rick, I love you and you're the one who said we could get through anything together. Don't change the rules now."

"There are no rules when it comes to this," he'd mumbled, untangling their hands to cup her face in his palms. "You should know that."

" _Castle-_ "

"I'm sorry," he'd whispered, smearing his lips to her forehead before he had let her go. He had let her go. "I'm so sorry."

And part of her had understood, still understands, but Castle isn't her. Castle thrived on human company, on having a support system, and she would have given him that, she would have tried her hardest to be whatever he needed, but he had left her. He hadn't even told her where he was going, just sent her and Alexis stupid little postcards with nothing more than the signature of his name at the bottom.

"I've never seen him like this," Alexis had sighed one afternoon, just a few days after Castle had left, a mere week before Kate had moved out of the loft. "I mean, I miss Gram too, so much, and I know it's different, that she was his mom, but - but this isn't him."

"Grief changes people," Kate had murmured, staring down at the engagement ring on her finger.

"He'll come back," Alexis had assured her, her red-rimmed eyes so bright with hope, and his daughter amazed her, she really did. How Alexis could remain so hopeful despite all of the horrors she's witnessed would always remain a true miracle in Beckett's eyes. "Maybe he just needs a little bit of time."

A little bit of time had turned from weeks to months. Kate had buried herself in her work, resorting back to old routines to remain stable; Alexis had kept in contact with her, even requested Kate come with her to eventually visit her father where he was staying in Montana (she didn't even think to ask what the hell he was doing in Montana of all places), but Beckett had declined.

Her heart was still raw and bleeding and if he wanted to see her, he could ask himself.

He never did.

And he looks like he regrets it now. But she doesn't know if that's enough.

"Yesterday," Rick replies, his eyes roving her face, traversing down her frame, soaking her in with the summer heat. "I went to see Alexis as soon as I landed, unpacked at the loft. Found your ring."

Kate swallows hard, closes her eyes for a moment against the memory of the first time that ring had slid onto her finger, glistening and gorgeous in front of the swings, ruined by the recollection of the last time she had taken the ring off, placed it on his nightstand before she'd walked out with the last of her things.

"I was coming to see you today. Just now, actually." Her eyes peel open, find him watching her with a sheepish quirk to the corner of his mouth. "I have so much I need to say to you, tell you, try and explain. Apologize for."

"You left," she breathes, gritting her teeth when her bottom lip trembles, and she really wishes they weren't having this disastrous reunion on a public sidewalk. "I understand grief, Castle. I completely get that. But you left for _six months_ without another word and I just-"

"I didn't know how to come back," he confesses, his voice cracking, stretching the fault lines running through her sternum. "I've never had to – I just didn't expect her death to do that to me and I lost it, Kate. I didn't know how to keep going like normal, how to be me, to be a dad or a writer, a husband-"

"Fiancé," she mutters the correction, crossing her arms tightly over her ribcage. "Never made it to husband."

"No, and that's my fault," he concurs quietly. "I just couldn't… _be_ anything. And once I started to feel like myself again, felt a little better and mourned for my mother, six months had passed."

She lifts her eyes to the sky, the buildings overhead, and takes a deep breath to steady her racing heart. She can't fault him for it, as much as she wants to, as much as it hurts, because she's been there, disappeared for an entire summer for that exact same reasoning. And three months was only half of six, even though the last six months had felt like a lifetime.

"But that doesn't mean I stopped thinking about you, or loving you. I swear I never stopped loving you, Kate-"

Her arms fall apart in front of her to reach for him, fingers hooking into his sides to reel him in against her. Kate fists her hands in the fabric of his dress shirt the second his chest seals to hers, buries her face in his shoulder, inhales the scent that had long abandoned the t-shirt she wears now.

"You asshole, I haven't seen you in months and the first thing you do is make fun of me-"

"Kate," her name is a choked chuckle on his lips, but the stroke of his hand through her hair is soft, tender and soothing, and she chokes too, can't handle the reality of being held by him again. "Oh, I missed you, Kate."

A strangled noise escapes her lips and Beckett snakes her arms between their bodies to wind them around his neck, cling like her life depends on it.

"You can't ever do that again," she gets out, her chest shuddering violently against his until he tightens his arms around her, secures her body in the home of his embrace. "If we're going to do this, be together again, you can't, Castle. Can't do that to me-"

"I won't," he promises, painting the words to the corner of her eye, the movement of his lips on her skin brushing away the tear that leaks free. "I won't. Never again. I'll prove it. Promise."

Castle's arms around her are bruising, crushing her bones, squeezing her lungs, but she relishes in the sensation, the warmth that floods through her at having him back.

"Good," she whispers, combing her fingers through the baby fine hairs at the nape of his neck. "Now, let's go back to my place so we can talk some more and I can change since you spilled coffee all over my favorite shirt."


	6. Chapter 6

_"i was so sleep-deprived after the night shift that i climbed into bed with you (and you just rolled with it)"_

* * *

 **A/N: Post 2x18 AU.**

* * *

Staying in the loft again is strange, just like sleeping in the guest room upstairs instead of the bedroom downstairs, in a space beside him that used to be hers; it's odd emerging from her room each morning and coming downstairs for breakfast with him, his daughter and mother, as if no time had passed at all. It reminds her of how it used to be, months that feel like lifetimes ago, when she had lived in this loft, not as a guest, but as the woman he loved.

Remembering that time in her life unsettles her, scares her, fills her with a yearning so sharp she can barely breathe past it some nights, but her apartment had been decimated by the explosion and when Castle had learned of the case, the connection to Nikki Heat, he had insisted on stepping – bulldozing – back into her life, into her precinct, and offering her a once familiar place to stay.

She had refused to even consider the option, returning to her ex's home that had once been hers too an unquestionably horrible idea, but Lanie was already staying with a friend – their mutual friend of Javier Esposito – while her own apartment was being fumigated, Ryan's place was too small, and her dad was out of town.

"Come on, Beckett," he'd needled her in the break room, the two of them alone for the first time since he had shown up at the scene of the explosion earlier that night with worry in his eyes burning as bright as the flames engulfing her building. "Don't look so glum, I promise to be a perfect gentleman, unless you tell me otherwise of course, and Alexis will be thrilled to have you back, even if it's just for a couple of days."

"Are you trying to use your daughter to convince me?" she'd asked with the cross of her arms and arch of her brow.

"No," he'd huffed before stealing a glance at her from beneath the fringe of his lashes. "Is it working?"

She had rolled her eyes and smacked him on the arm as she'd walked past him, but the corners of her mouth had quirked in amusement.

But a couple of days had morphed into a couple of weeks, her time to search for a new place limited by the weight of her workload, the welcome embrace of comfort that his loft offered too enticing, giving her no reason to rush. Falling into old routines with Castle – coffee with him every morning before she left for the precinct, sometimes allowing him to win in his begging to come along for a case, Chinese takeout in the evening with him and Alexis while she helped the girl with her Latin, a glass of wine before bed on the sofa with her body curled into the arm of the furniture and her toes warm and tucked beneath his thigh.

She works overtime at the precinct to avoid going hom- no, not home - _to the loft_ too early, to avoid spending time outside of the station with him, to suppress the flood of warmth that spreads without warning through her chest every time she walks through the front door to find him waiting up for her, his eyes illuminating in the darkness each time.

And she's starting to wonder if leaving him had ever been a good idea.

Kate rests her head against the elevator tonight as she rides the lift to his floor, her eyes closed against the swarm of thoughts overtaking her mind, daydreams of what had been, could have been, plaguing her brain as they have been for the last two weeks, worsening in intensity with each passing day. The doors slide open with a soft chime and Beckett blinks, wobbles a little on her way out of the elevator, down the hall, her eyes bleary with weariness.

It's just past two a.m. and they had solved a double homicide that has left her blinded with exhaustion, heavy with fatigue, her fingers fumbling with the key he had given her as she tries to insert it into the front door.

Kate releases a breath of relief once the door finally clicks open and she can step inside the darkened loft, not surprised to find his usual waiting station of the armchair empty; she had called him at midnight, told him to go to sleep. For once, he had listened and it had her wondering if he was just as tired of evading the inevitable as she is.

Because that's how it's felt since she had caught sight of him from the back of the ambulance over two weeks ago, panicked and frantic to see her, to know that she was okay. Since he had rushed towards her with his skin pale and his eyes wide, roaming greedily over her living form before he'd lifted his hand to the scrape marring her cheek.

"Kate, are you okay? Are you hurt?" he'd breathed, the tips of his fingers barely brushing her skin before quickly falling away, and she had been too stunned by his sudden reappearance in her life after a full six months of being excluded from it to answer.

Six long months and her heart had still burned bright for him.

She'd known then that they were both doomed. Inevitable.

Kate kicks off her heels by the front door, sighing as she drops a few inches in height, flexes her toes on the hardwood floor and listens to them pop while she sheds one of the few jackets she had salvaged from her devastated apartment, hanging it in the coat closet next to his. The path to her room is short, taken with eyes already partially slit and threatening to seal closed with or without her permission.

Beckett heads straight for the dresser that contains the oversized shirts she prefers to sleep in, slipping out of her slacks and unbuttoning her blouse to slide the large top over her head. She catches his scent as the collar glides over her nose, hates herself for relishing in the caress of his smell of aftershave and laundry detergent to her senses, but too tired to linger on it, berate herself any further. She's already traipsing across the room to the bed, lifting the sheets and comforter on her preferred side of the left and climbing onto the mattress, settling beneath the blankets and sighing as her body sinks into the memory foam.

Her eyes are already closed the second her head hits the pillow, her mind already drifting towards a deep sea of unconsciousness, but before she can dive beneath the surface, the gentle touch to her face, the brush of her hair back from her forehead has her eyes fluttering open in curiosity.

"Kate?" She furrows her brow at the sight of Castle lying beside her, echoing confusion in his gaze, but a tender smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Get lost?"

Oh… she had, hadn't she? This was his room, wasn't it?

Shit.

"Oh, I did," she mumbles, but she makes no move to get up, to slip free from his bed, from the dust of his fingertips on her skin. She hadn't even thought about the path she was taking when she'd entered the loft, allowing her feet to lead her to her bed, where she wanted to be. "Autopilot."

"Mm, hard case?" he assumes, slowing his ministrations along the plane of her cheek to curve his palm at her shoulder, his thumb tracing the rounded edge of her bone, but if he's going to touch her, she wants more than that.

"Tiring," she sighs, inching closer to him in the bed, hooking her leg over his thigh and curling her arms to her chest as Castle's tentatively lace around her back, fingers stroking down her spine. Better. "Missed this."

Castle's chest expands with the deep breath he takes, rustling the bangs of her hair when he releases it after a long moment. "Me too. A lot. Does this mean-"

"Castle, m'about to pass out on you, so talk in the morning, kay?" she mumbles, feeling his puff of laughter stain her forehead before he nods, holds her body against his a little tighter.

* * *

Kate wakes in his bed the next morning, the light of the sun bleeding through the blinds still grey with lingering traces of the night, and she's momentarily bewildered before the blur of events from hours earlier rushes back, reminds her of what she'd done. Castle is already awake beside her, watching her, and she knows his lack of words is the chance he's giving her to run, to pretend it never happened, to call it a mistake and blame it on the over exhaustion that had claimed her the night before.

She shifts, feels the waves of disappointment radiating from his frame before her body can rise above him, settle atop him, and her hands can claim his face, her lips his mouth.

"Kate," he chokes out, his hands fluttering like anxious wings at her spine, and she knows she promised him that they'd talk, a promise she intends to keep, but this – it's been too long and she's sick of holding herself so carefully away from what she wants, who she wants.

"Rick," she parrots on a hum, his bottom lip between her teeth and his hips cradled between her thighs. "I missed this too."


	7. Chapter 7

_"you're my emergency contact and i've been in an accident so you drop everything to come to the hospital."_

* * *

He's never been so grateful that he has the bad habit of forgetting to set his phone to airplane mode until the very last second, that he's able to answer the phone call from the hospital before the flight attendant can tell him to power off all of his electronics, that he's able to scramble off of the plane in time.

The hospital where she's been admitted isn't far from the airport and Castle doesn't think he's ever ran so fast in his entire life, unable to stop until he's stumbling into the emergency room lobby, gasping out her name to the nurse at the front desk.

"Kate Beckett," he pants, his chest heaving almost painfully. "I'm Richard Castle, her emergency contact? They called me, is she-"

"Deep breath, Mr. Castle," the nurse tells him with a placating hand rising from the mouse of her desktop computer, but he doesn't have time for this. The doctor had said she was suffering from a severe case of hypothermia and he needs to know how the hell she had nearly frozen to death. "She's stable," the nurse informs him, reading facts from a clipboard on the desk that he's all too tempted to steal. "Unconscious still, but-"

"I need to see her, please just – let me see her," he practically begs, his heart beating too fast in his chest for him to stand it much longer.

The woman behind the desk must take pity on him, or just want to be rid of him, because she rises from her seat with a sigh, motions for him to follow her past her work station and down a narrow, white hallway.

"Doctor Davidson should be back to check on her within the hour," the nurse explains, but Rick can barely hear her over the deafening beat of his heart climbing up his throat and thundering through his ears as they come to a stop in front of a door the woman opens for him.

His gaze follows the nod of her head towards an occupied hospital bed partially hidden by a half drawn curtain, but he's still able to catch sight of her, Kate.

"Just don't touch anything, Mr. Castle," the nurse sighs, disappearing with the click of the door at his back.

Castle nods even though the woman is gone and starts towards the one in the hospital bed, bundled in blankets with an IV attached to the back of her hand, flushing fluids through the riverbeds of blue veins he can see too easily through the ghostly pale of her skin.

"Oh, Kate," he breathes out, unable to stop until he's towering over her hospital bed, as close as he can manage, close enough to graze his fingers to the papery thin skin of her cheeks, almost recoiling at the frigid feel of her flesh. Close enough to notice the tinge of blue to her lips in the dimmed room, the smudges of purple coloring the sunken in skin stretched around her sockets, the near black quality to her nail beds.

He has no idea what happened, how she ended up like this when the last time he'd seen her nearly two weeks ago, she had been fine. Broken hearted and furious with him, but physically stable. He has no idea what happened, but he should have been there, should have kept her warm.

"I'm so sorry, Kate," he rasps, gingerly stroking her hair back from the harsh bones of her face, unable to stop touching her again now that he's started, hopeful that some of his warmth will bleed into her.

But Kate's eyes flutter when he traces his thumb to the frozen shell of her ear, the lift of her lids looking like a true struggle, her lashes like dead weights dragging them back down.

"Castle?" she murmurs, so soft and confused, and Rick nods, cradles her chilled cheek in his palm.

"Hey," he gets out, watching her eyes slide up to meet his, feeling her head tilt just slightly into his touch. "Wanna tell me how you ended up an icicle?"

Her mouth quirks, but Kate merely sighs, her lips barely able to part, make enough room for the words' escape. "You came back."

And Castle tries not to choke on his remorse.

"I never left," he admits, brushing his thumb to her brow when it creases in question. "I got the call from the ER before the plane took off, but Kate, I'm - I'm so sorry, so sorry I'd decided to leave in the first place. Regretted it from the second I left your place that night."

"Shh, Castle, it's okay," she whispers, one of her hands emerging from within the cocoon of blankets. "Our stupidest fight yet."

Castle chuckles, a broken, watery thing that has her snagging the hand at her cheek, fitting her fingers through the spaces between his.

"Yeah, it was, but you had every right to be upset when I sprung the whole book tour on you, expecting you to follow me to Europe-"

"Follow you anywhere," she muses with an arch of her eyebrow and a playful twist of her lips, and a weak squeeze of her fragile fingers to the bones of his. "It was just a bad day, hard case, I wasn't - the book tour thing just took me by surprise, too much."

"I know and I'm-"

"But I would have said yes," she rasps, trying to clear her throat, and Castle moves to reach for the pitcher of water on her bedside table but Kate squeezes his hand harder. "Rick."

"I love you," he breathes, drawing her hand up to his lips, sealing a kiss to the brittle bones of her knuckles while she hums in approval, strokes her thumb to the corner of his mouth. "And I'm just glad I got off the plane in time."

"God, I'm so sorry they called you," she mumbles, blinking against the exhaustion that's clear in her eyes, but Castle scoffs.

"I'm not. Still honored to be your emergency contact, especially after – everything," he murmurs. "If I wasn't, I would have been having a panic attack in Paris trying to get back to you as soon as Ryan spilled the beans."

A breath of laughter escapes her chapped lips and Kate tugs on his hand, flickers her eyes between him and the bed. "I think it goes without saying that our breakup is annulled."

"I agree with this assessment."

"Then get in the bed and warm me up, Castle."

The laughter that bubbles out of him is a little easier this time, the pace of his heart not so painful, and once he's settled in beside her, the frail frame of her body curled tight against his side, he holds her like he would have in the freezer she tells him about.


	8. Chapter 8

_"we broke up after i left and moved away and months later i find out you rushed to the airport to stop me but you were too late."_

* * *

Her heart was raw when she walked back to her apartment alone, her eyes swollen and bloodshot from the half hour she spent in an empty bathroom stall at the airport, unable to hold back the stupid tears long enough to make it home. She'd wept silently but violently, unexpectedly, into the fold of her arms above her knees, her thighs sealed to her chest to keep it from cracking open and spilling all over the restroom floor.

Losing him had hurt in a way she hadn't been prepared for; she hadn't experienced anything even close to the ferocity of the ache he had instilled within her chest since her mother had died.

She had loved him and while he may not be dead, he was no longer here, no longer hers, and it wasn't the same, not even close, but it hurt. Fiercely.

Weeks pass in Rick's absence and she carries on, does her job, buries herself in it, refusing to be broken by a break up, but that doesn't stop her from playing their argument over and over in her head, how they had ended on such an ugly note. She had never wanted them to end like that, never truly imagined them ending at all, but definitely not in an exchange of bitter words and verbal blows.

She had never wanted that and she'd realized too late that it couldn't end like that, that she couldn't just let him go, but by the time she had reached the airport, his flight to Boston had ascended into the sky and her pride had stopped her from picking up the phone every day since.

It's months before she sees him again, that first time like a knife wound to her chest, a sharp, lancing pain through a scar that had barely formed, spreading like fire the second it pierces her sternum, memories like bullet holes penetrating every part of her.

He's sitting on the floor beside her apartment door, his head tilted back against the wall, wilting flowers cradled in his arms. It takes her a moment to coax her lungs into cooperating, relearning the in and out rhythm required to breathe, before she continues from her spot frozen feet away from her door, from him.

Kate swallows hard and stops at his feet, nudges the toe of her boot against the sole of his shoe and watches him startle without hesitation, eyes blinking furiously in confusion before flying up to see her, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, but failing to form.

Doesn't stop his eyes from blooming into a luminous shade of blue she hasn't seen in oh so long.

"Kate," he breathes, balancing the flowers in the crook of his elbow as he gets to his feet, dusts himself off to stand before her. "Hi."

"You're back," she blurts without thinking, the single thought pushing to the forefront of her mind.

"Yeah, I had a signing at the Barnes and Noble here this morning and I - I wasn't going to come," he admits, his throat bobbing with a thick swallow, his body swaying as he shifts. Two of his nervous ticks. "I knew you probably wouldn't want to see me, but I got a call."

Beckett arches one of her eyebrows in question, not sure where the hell this is going, what they're doing. Still a bit shocked that he's standing in front of her again for the first time in three months.

He looks good. Really good.

"A call?"

"From Lanie."

Her heart drops, flips and bumps against the cage of her ribs that's already threatening to cave in. Oh, if Lanie told him the truth, she would _kill_ her.

"And?" Kate crosses her arms, forces her poker face to remain in place, her expression neutral. As long as he can't hear the deafening pound of her heart, she won't give anything away.

Castle takes a step towards her, his chest rising with a deep inhale, straining against the midnight fabric of his shirt, and she has to curl her fingers into fists, ignore the urge to indulge in the once familiar habit of draping her palm to his sternum, feeling the cadence of his heart beneath her hand.

"You came to the airport that day," Castle states and she mentally curses her best friend for spilling her secrets, for going behind her back and contacting Castle in the first place, but she hardly has the time to linger in the wash of betrayal before Rick is taking another step closer, speaking more words that could potentially devastate her. "You tried to stop me. But you were too late."

Kate scrapes a hand through her hair, the heel of her palm glancing the heated skin of her cheek.

"Yeah, I was, but that was three months ago, Rick. You've moved on and so have I-"

"You're seeing someone?" His eyes, so soulful and cerulean, flicker inquisitively, begin to darken to a blend of deep blues that she knows well, delicious shades of jealousy that she's seen plenty of times before.

Kate shrugs and lifts her chin. She's wearing her heels, but he's still an inch or two taller than her, just enough height to tower over her. "So what if I am? You're going to tell me you haven't been with anyone since we broke up?"

"No," he answers, the single syllable sharp as it exits his mouth, definite, and something in her chest eases. "I couldn't have even if I wanted to."

Her treacherous heart begins to pick up speed again, accelerating too fast for her to keep up with.

"Why not?"

Castle's hand twitches at his side, fighting the yearning to touch her – at least it's mutual – and losing within seconds, ascending to graze his knuckles to the bone of her hip before his fingers extend to splay at her waist.

"You know why."

Kate blinks against the urge to screw her eyes shut, the spread of heat bleeding out from where his hand rests atop her hip overwhelming, soaking through the fabric of her jeans, branding her flesh all too easily.

"You left," she gets out, gritting her teeth and refusing to cry. Not over him, not anymore. "And I know I could have called, but I just - couldn't. There was a reason I didn't make it to the airport on time, happened the way it was supposed to happen-"

"Bullshit," Rick scoffs, curling his fingers into her skin, barely having to apply a hint of pressure for her to drift in closer, the warmth of his chest just a breath away from touching the still folded barrier of her arms across hers. "Don't tell me you started believing in the workings of the universe while I was away."

"You're the one who always wanted me to believe in fate," she mutters, glaring at his chin, unable to meet his eyes anymore.

"Oh, I still want you to believe in fate," he muses, his hand traveling from her hipbone to trail along the small of her back, splaying over her tailbone. "How else would you explain us ending up right back here again?"

Kate scoffs, rolls her eyes. "That's not fate, that's Lanie."

Castle laughs but shakes his head, strokes his thumb along the base of her spine through the suddenly too thin material of her blouse.

"Fate featuring Lanie," he decides and Kate finally bites the bullet, lifts her eyes to find his already watching her, waiting on her. "Why'd you come after me when you said we were over?"

She bites her lip, feels all of those overwhelming emotions only he could evoke welling up in that sealed off cavern of her heart where she stored them away, breaking through her carefully crafted walls, devastating the barriers in waves that crash through her chest. Three months and she had thought they were dissipating, that she would move on someday soon, but she had been fooling herself in that regard.

She loved him, _loves_ him, had never stopped loving him.

"Because we were never over."

The flowers fall at her feet when Castle reaches for her face, cradles her cheek in his large palm as he leans in to kiss her for the first time in far too long, and Kate arches on her toes, snakes her arms around his and welcomes drape of his mouth, the sweep of his tongue. She welcomes him home.


	9. Chapter 9

_"i kissed you goodbye by accident - old habits die hard okay?!"_

* * *

The first time it happens is a complete and total (and mortifying) accident. They had just wrapped a case and he had just retreated to the break room with her empty coffee mug to deposit in the sink, and it had all felt so normal again in that moment. A deserted homicide floor in the middle of the night, Castle loyally remaining by her side until she finished the last of her paperwork, despite how he no longer owed her any kind of loyalty at all.

They'd been broken up for only a couple of weeks, the wounds still fresh and the protest still fierce in his eyes every time they met hers, and he wasn't going to stop shadowing her. She had learned to accept it, wasn't going to ask him to leave (even if it _was_ safer for him), and his constant presence had lulled her back into that beautiful normalcy they had created between them. He was no longer in her bed, but he was always in her precinct.

"I'm going to head home to Alexis," he informs her, striding out of the break room with a strained smile strung across his lips.

They used to go home together.

Kate was already standing, her coat in her fingers while she sorted through the last of the paperwork, ensured everything was in order for tomorrow, where a fresh homicide would surely drag her from bed or be waiting to greet her when she arrived in the morning.

"I hope she's asleep by now," Beckett murmurs, slipping a stack of reports into the tray at the edge of her desk. "She has that big chemistry test in the morning, if I'm remembering right."

Something painful flashes across his face, unbidden but quickly concealed by the warm smile he gives her. "Yeah, she does. You know, Kate, you could still come over sometime. For Alexis. I know she misses you, too."

She bites her lip at the offer, knows it's a bad idea as soon as it leaves his mouth. She had grown close with Alexis while dating Rick, developing a tight friendship with the girl, but she knows that if she shows up at Castle's loft, spends time with his daughter, she'd also be spending time with him.

"I'll call her tomorrow, see if we can set up a movie night," she compromises, kind of, noticing the gratitude bloom in his eyes.

"She'll be thrilled," Castle promises her, grinning while he grabs his own coat, shrugs it onto his shoulders. "Walk you out?"

"Sure."

Nothing wrong with simply walking with him to the street, right? Friends can do that. Because that's all they were, that was the most they were allowed to be – friends.

"Until tomorrow?" Castle inquires after their brief ride in the elevator shrouded in comfortable silence, their stroll through the lobby out onto the sidewalk that will send them in different directions, and Kate nods.

"Yeah," she sighs, shaking her head when his smile grows for her at the concession. She'd tried fighting him on it already, tried her hardest to convince him to just stop, to seek out new inspiration, one who didn't have a target etched in permanent ink onto her back. "Tomorrow. Just – stay safe, okay?"

"Always," he winks and Beckett rolls her eyes, stretches forward on her toes before she even realizes what she's doing to place her hand at his side, smear a kiss to his mouth.

The sharp intake of his breath beneath her lips has her going stiff with the shock of what she's done, jerking back as if she's been burned, her mouth on fire and her heart pounding too hard.

"Kate-"

"No, no, I'm sorry," she whispers, touching her fingers to her seared lips and backing away from the man with beseeching blue eyes. "I wasn't - I'm sorry."

Beckett turns on her heel and strides away from him, trying not to run down the street, run away from him. Hurt him any more than she already has.

Her hand stings from the momentary drape of her palm to his side, over the healed gunshot wound that had happened because of her.

* * *

The second time is his fault and she still doesn't buy that it was an accident.

She has that movie night with Alexis a week after she had left him standing alone and heartbroken on the sidewalk in front of the Twelfth, continuing an ongoing Harry Potter marathon they had started two months ago, before her relationship with Castle was shattered by the graze of a bullet. Rick had stepped out for the night to make things more comfortable for her and she appreciates it, she really does, but after Alexis has fallen asleep twice on the couch beside her, Kate pauses the film displayed on the massive projector screen in front of them and nudges the girl awake, encourages her to head to bed.

Kate cleans up the leftover popcorn, straightens up the living room, and washes the glasses they had filled with soda in his kitchen sink. She lingers at the coat closet, hesitant to leave Alexis alone in the loft, even if the girl was nearly seventeen and capable of being on her own. Luckily, Castle simplifies the decision for her.

"Hey," he greets, bustling through the door with armfuls of overflowing grocery bags and casting his eyes to the living room. "Alexis pass out on you?"

"I figured she would," Kate chuckles, relieving him of a few bags, assisting him in his trek towards the kitchen. "Between school, friends, and Ashley-" She has to pause to bump his hip for the scowl he conjures up for Alexis's new boyfriend. "She's worn out. Besides, we made it through _The Order of the Phoenix_ and that was our only real goal."

Castle grins and begins unloading groceries, transferring food into the fridge. "Have you eaten?"

"Popcorn," she nods, pointing to the bowl in the sink, and Castle rolls his eyes at her.

"An actual meal, Beckett."

"I'm good, Rick," she assures him, watching him load the last of his purchases into the fridge, reluctance in his eyes as he closes the door. It goes against his every instinct not to offer her something, a home-cooked dinner like they used to indulge in multiple times a week, but he already knows she won't take what he gives, won't stay.

"I'll walk you out then," he murmurs, following her to the door and holding her coat up for her even as she sighs, slips her arms through the sleeves and closes her eyes when he allows his fingers to linger at her shoulders, along her nape when he brushes her hair from the collar. "Tomorrow?"

Kate pauses in his doorway, the front door ajar and her exit clear, glances over her shoulder to meet the sad smile adorning his lips.

"Tomorrow," she confirms with a small curl of her mouth in return.

"Beckett," he calls quietly before she can start down the hall, causing her to turn with an arch of her eyebrow in question, straight into the quick press of his lips to hers. Kate's breath catches in her lungs painfully, but the kiss lasts no more than a second before Castle is pulling away with a smile all too soft and a shrug of his shoulders. "Oops, habit."

Yeah, definitely not an accident.

* * *

The third time isn't an accident. Not planned, probably not the right thing to do, but certainly not an accident.

She nearly loses him for a second time in a mere matter of months, nine weeks, and it shreds her heart, her resolve, overriding the tidal wave of relief she feels when she bursts through the door of the motel room, finds him tied to a chair and breathing. Alive.

Even after he had been grazed by a bullet during a routine check of a building where a suspect had been lying in wait, he hadn't been shaken nor traumatized, cracking jokes about cool scars and holding her hand in the ambulance, promising her he'd be fine while they stitched up the stretch of ripped skin below the bottom rung of his rib. That had been nothing compared to how he looks now, sitting beside her at the edge of a pool that glows turquoise, casts the blue light onto his face and highlights the haunted guilt in his eyes.

"Rick," she murmurs, squeezing the hand laced with hers atop his knee. "Let me take you home."

They don't speak on the drive to his loft and she doesn't let go of his hand unless absolutely necessary, reclaiming it whenever she can. Kate parks her cruiser and cuts the engine once they're in front of his place, walks him up to his floor and stalls in the doorway while he puts his coat away.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asks, already knowing the answer, able to read it in the tight-lipped smile he forces for her, the hollow blue of his gaze.

"I'll be fine, Kate. My mother and Alexis are here, but really, I'm sure I just need some rest," he assures her, but she _knows_ him, knows he won't sleep at all tonight.

"Castle," she sighs, hooking her fingers in his belt loop and staring up at him in the darkness of his loft, nothing but the light of the kitchen on to illuminate the shadows across his face.

She's hurting him, making it all worse by being here, by lingering in his open doorway with her knuckles pressing against his hipbone, but she just can't - she doesn't want to leave him. She had thought… had hoped that if they were broken up, that his interest in crime fighting would fade, that he would back off and no longer be put at such a constant risk, that no one – serial killers or idiots who had terrible aim like the guy who had shot him, or those who wouldn't miss, like Dick Coonan – would be able to get to him as long as he wasn't with her.

But what would have been the point of her attempt at selflessness if she would have lost him tonight despite all of the grueling work she's put towards staying away from him throughout the last two months?

Castle hooks his arm around her neck and draws her into an embrace, crushing and warm and Kate releases the loop of his pants to band her arms tight around his ribs in return, seal her chest to the wall of his and relish in the desperate throb of his heart beating wild against hers.

"We can't-"

"I know," he gets out, his voice so ragged and gravelly, and Kate vehemently shakes her head against his neck where her face is buried, opens her mouth to the side of his throat, locates his pulse beneath her lips and bites down.

Castle's body jerks like a livewire against her, his fingers fisting in the black fabric of her turtleneck at her shoulder blades.

"We can't go on like this," she finishes, her lips brushing his skin, her hands rising to his face to caress his cheeks with the tips of her fingers, to memorize the sensation of his warm flesh beneath her touch, the roughness of his stubble abrading her skin. "I love you. I thought I lost you and I love you-"

The glide of Castle's fingers into her hair quickly clench into a fist, drawing her face from the cove of his neck so he can capture her lips, kiss her hard and deep and relentless until she's barely repressing whimpers, barely in control of her arching spine.

"Don't go," he rasps, his nose colliding with hers when they stumble into the door, slamming it closed, and Kate groans quietly, rocks into the cradle of his hips, the bracket of his thighs. "God, Kate-"

She mewls, pent up weeks of need and heartache and tension rioting through her chest, her bloodstream, boiling her from the inside out. Her arms around his neck and her leg coiled around his thigh, the door at her back, she practically climbs his body, humming in approval when Castle assists, lifts her into his arms and embraces the cling of her body, curling forward as if she can shield him from it all.

"In the morning," he gruffs, some of the agony, the grief, gone from his voice, arousal crawling up his throat.

"I'll be here," she swears against his mouth, paints the promise to his tongue with the stroke of her own, with the undulation of her hips. "Right beside you, Rick."


	10. Chapter 10

_"cop!au i've been undercover for months/years and i know i told you not to wait for me but i'm still in love with you and it's killing me."_

* * *

She walks into his book launch party with low expectations, minimal hope that he'll notice her amidst the crowd, acknowledge her even if he does. It's been over a year since she had seen him last, since she had kissed him goodbye on an ordinary Wednesday morning, leaning over him in bed and tasting the sleep and sunlight on his tongue. They'd had dinner reservations, no special occasion, but they had only started dating a handful of months ago and he had been eager to see her dressed up for him.

But after she had arrived at the precinct, spoken to Gates and learning she would be participating in a "simple undercover mission", everything had changed.

She's only talked to him once since, a rushed phone call in a back alley, a tearful goodbye that he had refused to accept.

"Castle, I - you can't - I don't know when I'll come back. If I'll ever come back."

"You will," he had argued fiercely. "And I'll be here, I'll wait for you."

"Don't," she had ground out, biting back tears. "I can't ask you-"

"You're not asking. I'm telling."

The door to the club her people were infiltrating creaked, voices echoing off the brick walls of the alley. "Rick, I have to-"

"I love you, Kate. Stay safe. Just stay safe."

She still hates that the first time she hears the words since her shooting is on a burner phone, in a grimy alley; she hates that she'd had to hang up before she could say it back.

The mission had taken a full year to complete, her cover too deep for her to pull out any sooner, but the moment she is found in the woods, the moment the arrests are made and she is free of false identities and underground counterfeiting rings, her first thought is of him.

Her body is decimated from two full days of torture and she's forced to spend time in the hospital, unconscious for hours on end as her system recuperates through IV fluids and constant medical attention. Gates is the first to show up at her bedside, the boys next, and Lanie the last.

"Castle?" she had croaked to her friend, her larynx still in fading agony from the frigid spill of ice water down her throat, into her lungs.

She had told him not to wait. But he had promised her he would and foolishly, she had clung to it.

"He'll be so thrilled to see you again, sweetie," Lanie had cooed, brushing her hair back from her bruised forehead. "He's actually got his book party tonight, but I could call him-"

"No," Kate had wheezed, ignoring her best friend's quiet protests and sitting up in the bed. "Don't wanna ruin that for him."

"Kate. You would make his day, his entire year," Lanie had insisted and it gave her hope, inclination to believe that maybe, he had kept the unfair promise after all.

"I want to go," she rasped, grabbing Lanie's hand on the edge of the hospital bed when she had looked as if she was about to shoot the idea down. "I - he always loved surprises and even if - I just want to see him."

"Girl, you are so damn lucky I'm a hopeless romantic," Lanie had huffed and together, they had devised a plan to have her out of the hospital by that evening, have her dolled up and donning a gorgeous gown befitting of a Richard Castle soirée.

"You're a miracle worker, Lanie," she had murmured, embracing her best friend in a long hug.

Lanie had hugged her back tight before she had pulled away, adjusted the curls of Kate's hair in the bathroom of Lanie's apartment. "I missed you too, honey."

Kate dusts her fingers over the same curls self-consciously now, hoping the sweep of her bangs and the layer of makeup on her skin will hide the swell of purple consuming the left side of her forehead, the scrapes branching out from the edge of her eyebrow where the sharp fingers of the forest had reached for her when she had been readied for her execution.

A flash of red hair catches her attention, the pale moon of Alexis's smiling cheek across the room, complimented by the midnight blue of her dress. Only a year, and his daughter has matured into a young woman, standing out amidst the sea of blondes in vibrant party dresses, and if Alexis is here, she knows her father must be near too.

Kate scans the room, smoothing her fingers over the soft, white fabric of the dress. She would have chosen something more demure, less attention drawing than the gown that clings to her curves and falls just past her knees, but she already knows that is the exact reason Lanie had picked this dress.

His book, Deadly Heat, decorates every table, has small crowds gathering around the pyramids of novels, but she can't seem to locate the author.

"Katherine Beckett?" the familiar gasp of Martha Rodgers has her nearly toppling in her four inch heels, the first pair she's worn in quite a while, but Kate accepts the woman's tight embrace when she steps forward, wraps her arms around Beckett's shoulders. "Oh my goodness, darling! Where on earth did you come from?"

His mother pulls back after only a moment, hardly long enough for Kate to even return the hug, lifting her decorated fingers to Kate's cheeks, concern spilling through her bright blue eyes at the sight of her injuries up close.

"The hospital, actually," Kate chuckles nervously, moving to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear before thinking better of it. "I - I don't know how much Castle told you, but I was just extracted two days ago and it's - I know it's probably selfish of me to impose on his big night, but I-"

"Selfish? Oh, sweetheart," Martha tisks, talk of an undercover mission and her hospital stay failing to faze her. "I am personally thrilled to see you, but Richard? My son is going to be ecstatic."

Kate takes a deep breath, attempts to calm her nervous heart with Martha's words. "Do you know where he is? I was hoping-"

"Oh, of course! I'll take you to him. He's in the back lounge, kind of avoiding the scene," Martha clues her in under her breath as she takes Kate's hand, guides her through the crowd towards a door marked 'PRIVATE'.

Beckett's brow furrows. "Avoiding… but I thought he loved these parties."

Martha hesitates, but leads her through the door after being waved through by a single security guard. The room they enter is slightly smaller than the one they had just left, the lighting low, the muffled sound of the music from the party the only sound to penetrate the air, and the decorations kept to a minimal. A few of his books lie scattered across a sleek coffee table, an abandoned marker lying atop one, but it's the man on the plush leather couch, lying with his arm thrown over his eyes, that catches her attention, steals her breath.

"Castle," she gets out, her voice a strangled thing, but he hears it, recognizes it, and his arm immediately drops, his body instantly shifting to sit up, twist around.

"Kate?" he breathes, his eyes igniting into blue flames and his body rising with the fire.

"I'll leave you two to get reacquainted," Martha whispers, squeezing the bone of Kate's shoulder before disappearing through the door, but Beckett fails to acknowledge his mother's exit, fails to breathe without her damaged lungs snagging on the spikes of her ribs.

Castle takes a step towards her, wary, as if he doesn't quite believe she's truly there, but he wants to. She can see how badly he wants to. "You're - are you back? Is it over?"

Kate swallows past the ache in her throat and nods. "I was just extracted two days ago," she repeats, earning another step towards her. "I wanted to call you as soon as I could, but I had to stay in the hospital-"

"Hospital?" he echoes, that dazed look in his eyes clearing as he scans her face, pinpoints her injuries and finally stands close enough to touch her, to dust his fingertips to her cuts and bruises.

"Nothing serious," she promises, her heart exalting at his proximity, his fingers on her skin. "But today was the first day I was able to think straight and Lanie told me you had a book party-"

"This your way of surprising me?" he mumbles, the corner of his mouth twitching, but struggling to form a smile, and Kate finally remembers the hands hanging limp at her sides, lifting her fingers to his lips, tracing the lines like parentheses bracketing his mouth.

"I didn't want to ruin your book party," she whispers, following the lines surrounding his lips to caress his jaw, skim her nails along the stubble peppering his skin.

But Castle catches her hand, cradles her palm against the line of his jaw, and shuts his eyes, inhales a deep breath that has his chest expanding, brushing against hers.

"You waited for me," she murmurs, her eyes already stinging with the realization, her teeth snagging her bottom lip to stop it from trembling. "I told you not to."

Rick's eyes flutter open, an argument already on his lips, so Kate presses her thumb to the seam before it can break free.

"I told you not to, but I'm still - still so in love with you, Castle," she confesses, her hand scaling the side of his face until her palm is draped along his cheek and his arm is twining around her waist, drawing her closer. "The entire time I was gone, you're what got me through the worst of it, the idea of coming home to you. If you still want that-"

Castle huffs and leans in, level with her in height thanks to her heels, and she holds her breath, awaits the welcome touch of his mouth that she's only been able to daydream about for the past year.

"I will always wait for you, Kate," he whispers, his lips brushing, caressing hers with the words. "You're always worth waiting for."


	11. Chapter 11

_"i found the ring when i was moving my stuff out of your apartment and now everything makes sense."_

* * *

The look on her face haunts him, how utterly devastated she had sounded calling his name as she had trudged through the decimated remains of the bank in search of him, how she had fallen to her knees the second she located him and the other hostages, the desperation in her kiss when she'd cupped his face in her trembling hands and sealed her lips to his in relief.

He doesn't think he's ever seen Kate Beckett so scared. It scares him how easily he was able to do that to her and he just… he doesn't want to be another person she has to say goodbye to, to bury. He couldn't do that to her, he just can't.

He puts the ring back in the jewelry box, tucks it back into the drawer before she can return, and steels himself for what he has to do.

* * *

He's different after the bank explosion, distant and on edge the morning after they go back to his apartment, have dinner with his family, and reaffirm life against the wall of his office, in the shower, the bed. That night he'd been so raw and cut open, all of it exposed to her, and she'd held him until he'd drifted to sleep against her with his cheek to her chest, his ear to her heartbeat, until the horror had finally eased.

That had been the last night they'd had together before he began to shut her out while he shut down, using her own old coping mechanisms against her. She goes to Alexis, to Martha, seeking reason, but they're just as baffled by the sudden darkness he carries as she is, unable to comprehend what would have Richard Castle withdrawing from life rather than celebrating it after nearly losing his own.

"I don't understand," she whispers when he tells her he thinks they need a break, staring back at her with hollow eyes and a frown that's been there for days straight. "Castle, I thought - since when are you the one who has communication issues? What - just tell me what this is about."

"I just need some time, like you needed last summer," he reminds her, throws back at her, and it hurts to remember the summer after her shooting, where he'd had to stand by her from afar for over a month and a half while she healed in solace. It hadn't been fair, not to him, but they had worked through it, moved past it, and she couldn't understand why he would change that method now.

"But you won't even talk to me," she argues, snagging his hand in the foyer of the loft before he can walk away from her (because apparently he does that now) and squeezing his fingers tight. "Was there something… what did I do, Rick?"

For the first time in the four days since the explosion, emotion breaches his eyes, bleeding more darkness into the greys of his irises.

"Kate, I love you," he breathes, using her grip on his fingers to draw her forward, seal his lips to her forehead. "But I just can't be with you."

She had nearly lost him in the bank, and now she was losing him again.

"Fine," she murmurs, releasing his fingers and pulling away from him, giving him what he wanted. "I'll stay at my place tonight, start packing up my stuff this week."

He doesn't speak, but she doesn't need to hear anything, doesn't need to pepper the fresh slice through her chest with salt by looking at him either; Kate glides past him for the front door, makes it into the hall, the elevator, before the tear in her heart splits wider, has her pressing the emergency stop button before she can sink to the floor of the lift, grit her teeth until breathing doesn't hurt so much and she can leave his lobby with her composure intact.

Castle isn't at the precinct the next day, not that she had expected him to show, and they have no active cases going, so she takes the liberty of cleaning out her desk of his things. She allowed him a drawer, much like she had at her apartment, where he could keep some of his knick-knacks and a notebook, pens, a plethora of sticky notes with Nikki Heat ideas and dialogue scribbled on the front and back of the multicolored papers. The fault lines in her heart split wider as she packs his things into a small box, biting back ridiculous tears by the time she's laying his long chain of paperclips atop the rest of the items.

But it's intrigue that breaches her sorrow when she thinks the drawer is finally empty only to encounter a palm-sized box pushed to the back of the enclosure.

Kate sits back in her office chair with the little black box in her fingers, her battered heart beginning to accelerate in her chest, knocking against the brittle bones of her ribcage. It's a jewelry box, but he wouldn't… he wouldn't have a ring for her if he had intended to break up with her. And if he had, surely he would have removed it from _her_ desk before he decided to end things.

Sure enough, though, when Kate pops open the box with her thumb, an engagement ring is glittering back at her.

He had wanted to marry her. He was going to _propose_ to her. And yet, suddenly, he chooses to end the best relationship either one of them has ever experienced? No, she won't accept that, she won't just let him go without a fight.

Beckett pockets the ring once she's slid her coat on, a job that used to be his, that feels wrong now that the responsibility is her own once more, and spares a glance to Ryan and Esposito.

"Hey, do you guys mind-"

"Covering for you?" Ryan quips with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.

Had she really looked that torn up over Castle throughout these last few days that even her boys had noticed?

"We got your back, Beckett," Esposito chimes in, and yeah, she must have.

"Thanks, guys," she attempts a smile, but the twisted thing that claims her lips feels more like a grimace.

She takes a cab to the loft, her knee bobbing anxiously in the backseat. Nothing has made sense since the bank bombing – his behavior, their breakup – but finding the ring hidden in her desk drawer has made one thing clear. Rick Castle had loved her enough to want to propose spending the rest of his life with her, and the only reason he would change his mind in such an uncharacteristic manor is if something had spooked him.

Like the idea of dying, leaving her alone like her mother had.

Kate pays the driver, almost stumbles out of the cab once it stops outside his building, but she doesn't miss a beat after that, striding into his building with determination rushing through her veins, burning through her blood. She climbs the stairs two at a time, too antsy for another elevator ride, and has to refrain from running down the hall to reach his door.

He swings it open after three relentless slams of her fist to the surface, the indignation on his face dissolving the second he realizes it's her.

"Kate-"

"You don't get to do this," she growls, not hesitating to step inside, imposing on his personal space and catching him by the cheeks with her hands. "You do not get to force your way into my life, my job, for three years, make me fall in love with you and then just _stop_. You don't get to leave me alone in this."

He groans at the punishing press of her mouth to his, the surge of her body arching into him, feeling just how badly he does at lying to her, himself. Castle's hands fist in the back of her coat, dragging her body up hard against his, indulging the work of her lips and clash of teeth, giving it all back to her.

"Don't want to hurt you, Kate, just don't-"

"You already did," she chokes out, losing control of the shortened reins on her emotions, digging her fingers into his shoulders to survive the force of them beating against her like a harsh wave. "You give me a reason or we work this out, Castle. You are not allowed to just decide we're over, you can't-"

"We aren't - can't be over," he rasps, his head shaking against her, his body backing hers into the still open door, nudging it shut. "I tried-"

"I love you. I'm not naïve enough to think that will stop bad things from happening, but I would rather be with you now, savor every second, than lose you and be left with the 'what if's," she says fiercely into the inch of space between their mouths. "What happened with the bank… losing you would have ruined me, but I wouldn't have changed anything. Never would have chosen not to love you."

Castle's chest has gone still, blue eyes wide and staring back at her. "How did you-"

"I'm a detective, you idiot," she mutters, loosening her bruising grip on his shoulders to drape one of her palms to his throat, lowering the other to her side, to delve into the pocket of her coat. "And I found this while I was clearing out my desk."

He stops breathing altogether the second she holds up the jewelry box between them.

"I don't know when you planned to do it, if you - but I know you," she whispers, the fierce ache in her chest gentling with his body towering over her, curled around her, and a wedding ring balanced between them. "You wouldn't just… stop loving me like this."

"I never stopped," he protests on a ragged exhale. "Not even close, I - I thought… fuck, Kate, I don't know what I thought."

"Trauma does that, you know," she murmurs, placing the ring in his hand, his to return to her whenever he decides, and banding her arms around his neck. "Over the last few years, though, you're the one who taught me talking about it is better than bottling it up and doing something stupid."

"Wish I'd taken my own advice," he gruffs, curling his fingers around the box, dropping his forehead back to rest against hers. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Kate sighs and skims her nose along his cheek, submerges her fingers in his hair. "My forgiveness could be earned."

"Oh?" he breathes, a tentative hint of a smile cracking across his lips.

"You have four days of hell to make up for, " she muses, her thumb stretching outwards to skim the shell of his ear. "But Ryan and Esposito are covering for me for the next hour, could be a good time to get started."

Castle lifts his free hand to graze his knuckles along her cheek, his touch so tender and good, so viscerally missed.

"Might want to pick a better hiding spot for that too after I leave," she mumbles, flicking her gaze to the ring still cradled in his palm, and Castle huffs.

"Did you open it?"

"How do you think I know what's in it?"

"Now I have to get you a new one," he decides, slipping the box into his pocket, replacing the fit of it in his fingers with the bone of her hip beneath his palm.

"But I liked-"

"Ruins the surprise, Beckett," he murmurs, earning a roll of her eyes for the ridiculous logic, but she doesn't care. Castle is slanting his mouth over hers, kissing her against the front door and wrapping his arms around her body to pull her closer after she had spent nearly a week convinced they had crashed and burned.

He'll propose to her someday soon and she'll say yes, she has no doubts or reservations about that, but for now, she just wants this, him.


	12. Chapter 12

_"instead of dividing up the CD's, let's play a drinking game to determine who gets what (it may or may not end in sex)"_

* * *

"Your shirt," Kate announces, the smile loose and lovely as it spills across her lips like the alcohol trickling through her veins.

Her entire body is relaxed and humming, pleasant waves lapping through her bloodstream, the constant weight she's felt in her chest finally gone. She feels _good_.

"Beckett," Castle whines from across her coffee table, pouting at her from his spot on the floor, and despite the liquor clouding her brain, despite the reason he's even here, she manages to find him completely adorable. "I like this shirt."

"Mm, so do I," she replies, tapping her index finger to her newest word on the board. Drunk Scrabble to determine who laid claim over items that were mutually owned had been a brilliant idea. She almost wants to thank him for suggesting it, just to see him glower.

"How does this even qualify as _both_ of ours?" he grumbles, unbuttoning the charcoal grey dress shirt she's worn many mornings.

"Because, Castle, I've probably worn that shirt almost as much as you have," she quips, lowering her hands to her lap to refrain from maneuvering around the table, helping rid him of the fabric his fingers fumble over.

Though, they do hasten at her words.

"Fair point."

"Hurry up and take it off so you can take your drink," she murmurs, directing her gaze back to the half filled board of letters in front of her.

"If I didn't know you as well as I do, I would assume you were trying to get me blackout drunk so you can rob me of _all_ my stuff," he huffs, slipping his arms free of the sleeves, cursing when his wrist gets caught in the right and he has to do far too much tugging.

Kate rolls her eyes and catches the shirt he tosses towards her. "I'm not one of your ex-wives."

He goes still in the same instance she does and all of that wonderful lightness drains from her system, replaced with lead.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't-"

"No, it's fine," he waves her off, but the expression on his face is no longer teasing and playful as it had been, grave and solemn instead. "Also true. I sure know how to pick 'em, don't I?"

She watches him lift the tumbler to his lips, down the remaining liquid left in the glass, the line of his throat rippling, and she follows the descent of the alcohol, caresses the bared planes of his chest with her gaze.

"You know that's not what I meant," she argues quietly, taking a sip from her own glass even though it isn't her turn.

"Maybe not," he muses, lowering his glass to the table with a little too much force, releasing it with careful fingers. "But, well, I did marry two women whose main focus was money, either from the start or a gradual progression. Didn't get to marry you, but already know you wouldn't have been like that. Never were."

Kate sucks in a shuddering breath, the hazy edges of her sobriety beginning to clear, allowing her to see the harshness of his features, of this new reality she's created for them.

"I never loved you for your money, Rick," she confirms softly, smoothing out his shirt over her lap.

Castle scrapes a hand through his hair, scrubs at his cheek while he avoids her eyes.

"Your turn."

Kate sighs and drops her gaze to the board, but all of the letters are beginning to blend together and she can't locate a spot to create a new word.

"Pass," she decides, filling her matching tumbler with another finger of whiskey, taking the shot with a quick swallow, and she tries to relish the burn of the liquor through her bloodstream, the sensation of spreading warmth. But the pleasure is gone and the alcohol tastes like acid in the back of her throat.

"Ooh, does that mean it's my turn to choose something?" he inquires with a quirk of his brow, but that gleeful delight from earlier is long gone now, their little game not so much fun anymore.

"Looks that way," she chuckles, watching him rise from the floor, gripping the arm of her couch for balance when he wobbles. "Where are you going?"

"That bird I gave you for Halloween all those years ago, from my Poe costume-"

"No!" she gasps, stumbling to her feet to catch him by the shoulders before he can pass her by, head into her office where that stupid bird is perched above her desk. "That's not mutually owned, that's _mine-_ "

"So was my _shirt_ , Beckett-"

She growls and tugs on his naked shoulder. Hard.

Castle curses as he careens sideways, gripping her arm from balance, but it's no use, they're both teetering now, collapsing to the floor.

"Jesus, Kate, you didn't have to tackle me for it," he groans, using her couch once more to heave himself up, into a sitting position this time, helping her lift to her knees at his side. "I had no idea a fake raven held such a special place in your heart."

The cocky smile he shoots her is reminiscent of those from their early days of working together, when she absolutely _hated_ him. It elicits the same rush of irritation through her system, the same exasperation, the same flood of arousal.

"You can't just take back a gift, you jerk," she points out, shoving on his shoulder when he laughs at her.

She doesn't point out how that fake bird holds memories that matter to her, flashbacks to that case with Morlock, his Halloween party, that moment in the break room she had never been able to shake. His face so close, his eyes on her lips, all of that playboy charm evaporating beneath the sheer _want_ jolting through the electric blues of his eyes that she can still recall so clearly.

It had been the first time she had almost given in, just leaned in and stolen a kiss from his infuriating mouth.

Much like she wants to now, but it wouldn't be fair. Not when they've called it quits, not when she's moving to a different city in less than a month, not when they're both still heartbroken from he declination of his proposal at their swings.

"So I have to pick something else?" he sighs, his bleary eyes roaming around her apartment before eventually falling back to land on her.

Castle snags his fingers in the hem of her NYPD t-shirt, stretching the edge of the soft, worn fabric towards him.

"I want this."

"I hate to break it to you, but I don't think you'll be able to wear this, Castle," she informs him with a lazy smirk, her abdominals quivering with restraint, fighting the urge to follow the gentle pull of his fingers, drift into his side.

"Maybe I just want something to remember you by."

Kate purses her lips, but his eyes won't return to meet hers, lingering on the coil of his finger in her shirt, how close he is to touching bare skin.

And then she surprises them both.

"Okay," she murmurs, dislodging his fingers when she grips the hem of her t-shirt in her own, glides the fabric over her head and drops it into his lap. "You keep mine. I keep yours."

Castle stares down at the shirt, his brow knit in a crease she doesn't understand. She just gave him her shirt and she's sitting in front of him in just her bra – he should be thrilled.

"I'd rather keep you."

Her lungs seize painfully within her sternum, collapsing, making room for the crumble of her heart.

"I didn't need a 'yes' that day," he states, curling his fingers in the pool of material, smoothing it between his fingers. "We ended it that day on the swings, but I never… I want to marry you, Kate, but more than anything, I just want you. However I can have you."

She doesn't miss the change in his tenses, past to present. How he still wants her.

"Even if it was from afar? Me in DC, you here?" she questions, attempting to bring up all of the reasons they had decided it would be better for them to just end it now, before it could fall apart on its own.

Rick shrugs, casts his eyes towards the nearly empty bottle on the table, but alcohol isn't the answer. Not the one she wants.

Kate leans forward on her knees, touches her fingers to his jaw to regain his attention, feeling his chest tremble with the sharp breath he takes before returning his eyes to her, doing his best to avoid her state of undress, focus solely on her face.

"I can write from anywhere, Kate."

It's all the answer she needs, using the drape of her palm at his jaw to balance her as she sways towards him, humming when he catches her by the waist just as she seals her mouth to his.

Castle moans, a breathless sound of relief, of contentment, a sound that welcomes her back, welcomes her home.

Kate slips her hands to his chest, splaying her palms over all of the tantalizing flesh that had called for her touch earlier, trailing them down the planes of his torso, grazing her fingertips along his nipples and grinning at the growl that climbs his throat, the nip of his teeth to her upper lip. Her fingers fit between the spaces of his ribs and her palms caress his sides while she favors his bottom lip, sucks and soothes with her tongue, digging her nails into his skin when he slides his fingers into her hair, coaxes her head into the angle he needs to plunge his tongue deep inside her mouth, to rob her of breath and ignite sparks that flicker behind her closed eyes.

"I would have said yes," she gasps, her chest crushing against his at the ragged intensity of her breathing, and Castle's eyes flutter open, his lashes lifting to mingle with hers. "I wanted - when you asked me, it just felt all wrong. With the job and our fight. Didn't' feel right."

His hands scale the naked expanse of her back, thumbs stroking the curved bow of her spine until they hook in the clasp of her bra, and Kate arches her chest, sighs out when the lingerie falls loose.

She's almost surprised by the quick maneuvering of his body, how he shifts forward and gently pins hers to the ground in one fluid motion, eases the black cotton from her breasts with a single sweep of his hand.

"DC could be great," he mumbles, his fingers tangling in her hair while hers climb his back, arms lacing around his body, drawing him down into the cradle of hers. "We could be great."

"Proven fact," she agrees on a gasp when he rolls his hips into hers, has her body arcing from the floor to collide with his. "Oh, we're so great together, Castle."

She hooks her legs around his waist, twines them at his back as she rocks her hips, lifts her head to recapture the fit of his mouth, the taste of his kiss and the searing seal of his skin to hers more intoxicating than the abandoned alcohol.

"I love you," Castle presses the words against her lips, a desperate declaration that rushes free, and her heart exalts with the rest of her body, that pleasant sensation of warmth spilling through her once more, stronger than ever.

Kate cups his face in her hands, momentarily gentling the work of his mouth, just long enough for her to catch her breath, to speak, say one more thing-

"Ask me again."


	13. Chapter 13

_"you keep calling me over to get rid of spiders from your apartment and i'm pretending i don't know you're not afraid of them at all because i miss you too."_

* * *

She had left a few of her books at his place, a pair of leggings and a few shirts, a half filled bottle of that cherry body lotion he had been loath to return. He'd packed up the small collection of her belongings into a bag and walked the distance to her apartment that night, climbed the stairs rather than take the elevator, and came to a stop in front of her door with the light bag in his grasp feeling like a thousand pounds.

Was it officially over once he gave her things back?

Rick swallows down the bitter taste of sorrow spreading on his tongue and knocks on her door, prepares to wait for her to cross the distance from her bedroom to the front door, but she's easing open the surface in half the time.

"Castle, hey," she greets on a murmur, her voice rough and her eyes so tired as they meet his in the dim lighting of her hallway. It's ten o'clock on a weeknight and he always expects her to look exhausted considering her job, considering… other things, but he doesn't quite expect her to look so ragged, so drained that she doesn't even attempt to hide it from him.

"Hey," he answers back before the pause grows too long. "I, uh - brought some of your things that you forgot at my place."

He lifts the bag between them, the motion jerky and awkward, and watches the frown that claims her lips carve deeper.

"Oh," she mumbles, curling her fingers around the recyclable bag he uses for groceries. "Thanks."

Castle shifts in her doorway, the words all tangling on his tongue, tripping over one another in hopes of escaping his mouth. "I just thought - I didn't know if you'd need… why are you sleeping on the couch?"

Beckett follows the trail of his eyes past her shoulder, towards the sight of her couch draped in a throw blanket and a pillow he recognizes from her bedroom, visible from his spot in the entryway.

"That was fast," she mutters and he tilts his head at her in silent question until she huffs. "You've been here for a matter of seconds, not even in the apartment, and you're already nosing your way back into my business."

The corner of his mouth quirks, unable to help it, even though it feels strange to have his lips curl in amusement again.

"Just friendly concern, Beckett," he answers easily, but his gaze lingers on her side without his permission, following the subtle brush of her fingers to the sensitive strip of skin that lies beneath the t-shirt she wears, where her ribs had been pushed apart to make room for the scalpel that had scraped inside her in search of a bullet that had damaged her heart. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, Rick," she says, softer now. "There was a spider in my room-"

"You still have that phobia?"

"Like you don't?" she tosses back quickly, their banter picking up again so easily, and damn, it makes him miss her even more than he already does. "And you know it's not like I'm actually _afraid_ of them, I just don't like knowing there's an eight-legged insect somewhere in my room while I'm unconscious."

"Okay, fair point, but my fear doesn't stop _me_ from sleeping in my bedroom," Castle teases her, earning an exasperated roll of her eyes.

"It's not fear," she insists, and yeah, he almost forgot that nothing scares Kate Beckett.

Not death, and definitely not spiders.

"Want me to hunt down the suspected spider so you can sleep in your actual bed?"

Kate arches an eyebrow at him, but surprises him, takes a step back to allow him entry into her apartment, a place he hasn't set foot in since before her shooting. Before he finally realized that she was never going to stop, that he couldn't stand by anymore, couldn't watch her die.

"And what exactly are you going to do if you find the spider, Castle?" she inquires, closing the door behind him and locking it with a series of clicks. "Because if I remember correctly, you're the one of us who can't stand them."

"We will work as a team here," he decides, striding towards her bedroom before cutting back his pace, remembering she can't exactly match it just yet, her scars slowing her down. "I will locate the spider, you dispose of said spider, and we all live in peace."

"Mm, you make it sound easy," she chuckles from behind him, leaning against the doorjamb to her bedroom while he enters a space he had once frequented quite often, memories of stumbling through the door to her bed, mornings he woke tangled in sheets and sunlight with her, assaulting his senses for a second too long before he remembers why he's here.

Just returning her things and rescuing the woman he loves but can't be with from a spider. Simple.

After twenty minutes, Beckett suggests he end the search.

"I'll find him, don't worry-"

"Castle," she laughs quietly, having migrated back to the couch in the living room, able to watch him from her makeshift bed on the sofa. "It's really not a big deal. It _is_ getting late, though, and you should head back home. Don't want to worry Alexis."

He hopes she can't see the way his body deflates with the sink of his heart as he sits balanced on his knees atop her bedroom floor, still scanning the area for any signs of movement, attempting to breathe through the devastation of her still caring about him, his daughter.

"She'll be fine," he promises her, but rises to his feet nonetheless, wincing through the pop of his knees. "She's actually spending the week in LA with her mom before school starts up."

"In that case, I'm the one worried about her," Kate mumbles and he laughs as he gives up the search, enters the living room to find her curled on her good side, her eyes half-lidded and her lips quirked with amusement.

"I'll tell her you said hi."

"Please do," she murmurs, her eyes drifting away from him to hide the sorrow, the shame. "Thanks for bringing my stuff over."

Castle swallows past the irrational panic climbing his throat at her segue into an impending goodbye, the building ache ready to burst through his sternum the second he walks out the door.

"Not a problem," he replies with a forced lift of his lips. "Sorry I couldn't locate the eight-legged intruder."

She shakes her head. "I'm sure it's long gone anyway. I'm just too comfortable to move."

He almost offers to carry her to bed before he thinks better of it. It would be too much, far too much.

"I could come back, you know," he offers, the words out of his mouth before he even realizes what he's saying, his brain too busy squashing one bad idea to stop the other from spilling free. "Do a routine check before you head to bed, make sure your space is arachnid free."

Kate studies him for a long moment, holding the edge of the throw blanket close to her chest, her fingers moving beneath the fabric as if she's attempting to soothe the rounded scar he knows resides there. "You don't have to do that."

No, and he shouldn't, shouldn't have been here as long as he was tonight.

"I want to."

It's the first thing he's wanted since he had stormed out of her apartment for the last time earlier that month.

She still remains uncertain, her bottom lip back between her teeth, but she doesn't argue, doesn't tell him no, and he wonders if she misses him too.

"Okay."

* * *

Castle makes it a routine of showing up in the evening, after he's sure that she'll be home from work and has had ample time to wind down from a day at the precinct, the strain he knows it must place on her still healing injuries. It's been over four months since her shooting, since her surgery, but he knows her pain is still great, her body still tender, the healing process far from over even if she did receive the all clear from her doctors to return to the field.

He sweeps her room for spiders each time he stops by, never expecting to actually find any, yelping the first time he does and hissing her name, waiting in her en suite bathroom while she herds the spider onto a piece of paper with a plastic cup and deposits it onto the outside of her window, ignoring his high-pitched chants of ' _kill it, kill it, kill it_ '.

He continues finding reasons to return to her apartment even after that, claiming that the spider they had rid her home of could have made itself comfortable, moved a family into her room somewhere, and that he takes maintaining her peace of mind seriously. And he does, he really doesn't want her to end up sleeping on her couch again over a damn spider, but they both know his reasoning for reappearing on her doorstep three times a week (at _least_ ) is weak. They both know, but neither of them acknowledges it and for the first time in four months, he's glad.

Kate begins the habit of cooking for him one night, lasagna already in the oven and close to fully cooked by the time he arrives, the mouthwatering aroma of sauces, cheese, and garlic engulfing her apartment. They have dinner at her dining room table like they used to, talk about the precinct and his family, topics that are safe and familiar, as if everything has gone back to normal. And he so greatly wishes it had, wishes he could have his normal with her back.

He almost kisses her goodnight that evening once he's finally grabbing his coat and heading out, his lips landing on the slash of her cheekbone.

He holds her through a brutal panic attack only a week later, when he shows up to witness her apartment in disarray, broken glass glittering across the living room floor, the blinds all drawn and the majority of her furniture either overturned or completely askew, the smell of whiskey on her breath when he descends to his haunches in front of her.

"I can't do this anymore, Castle. I can't," she had choked out, curling trembling fingers at his wrists when he had cradled her crumpling face in his hands, caught the tears spilling down her cheek with his thumbs while she tried so hard just to breathe. "Everybody's gone and they're - they'll finish the job-"

"No," he had argued, his voice soft, but the word still fierce as it flew from his mouth. "No one's going to kill you, Kate. And I'm here, I'm not going anywhere-"

"You already did," she'd rasped, some of the panic draining from her eyes, leaving hollows of endless black staring back at him. "It was the right thing to do. I'm - radioactive, Castle."

He doesn't agree with that, is no longer sure that leaving her, letting things fall apart between them without putting up a fight, was the right thing to do after all.

Castle had avoided the glass and maneuvered them both onto the safety of the couch, cradled her body against his chest as the last of the aftershocks had shuddered through her.

"You know I love you," he had whispered against her temple, closing his eyes when she had nodded.

"I know."

He had stayed with her until she had fallen asleep and then, he had carried her to bed before returning to the living room to clean up her apartment, dispose of all the glass, the leftover liquor, and right the furniture. He had left her after midnight, walked through the door of his loft a half hour later to meet the worried eyes of his daughter's on the couch.

"What are you doing, Daddy?"

He wishes he'd had an adequate answer for her. He resolves to retrieve one tonight, a mere 48 hours since he had picked her broken body from the floor and allowed the vivid beat of her pulse beneath his fingertips to soothe the fear that had spiked the second he had walked inside to see her drunk and petrified by her own shadow.

They had spoken on the phone the next morning, Kate had apologized, he'd told her there was nothing to be sorry for, sought only a promise from her, that she'd call him next time. But secretly, he hopes she won't have to, that he'll already be there.

Tonight, he's at her door with a purpose, a bouquet of lilies in his arm and determination bubbling in his blood as he knocks on the wooden surface with his knuckles. He won't leave until he has the definite answer he seeks.

"Castle," she answers the door with a timid smile, some leftover embarrassment shimmering in her gaze, but he wastes no time on pleasantries, on reassurances. He came here on a mission and he executes phase one by lifting his hand to cradle the sharp angle of her jaw in his palm, holding her steady as he steps inside and seals a firm kiss to her mouth.

He feels her gasp against him, the stutter of her chest as he kisses her for the first time in four months, favoring her bottom lip before painting his tongue along the seam of her mouth, humming when she parts for him without hesitation, rises on her toes and slides her arms up his chest to grip the collar of his shirt.

The crinkle of cellophane between them has him gentling, stroking the hinge of her jaw with his thumb and brushing a parting kiss to her upper lip before drawing back, pleased when she still tries to follow, to reclaim.

"Kate." Her eyes peel open, liquid pools of gold glittering back at him, and he feels his lips spread into a tentative smile. "Brought you flowers."

Her gaze flickers to the lilies still balanced in the crook of his arm, barely spared from being crushed between the planes of their bodies, and Kate releases a haggard breath of laughter.

"They're beautiful," she murmurs, a familiar tenderness in her gaze before it returns to him with a question forming. "But something tells me you came here with a purpose and I'm guessing it's one that doesn't involve hunting for spiders."

He wants to chuckle at her attempted joke, but his heart is beginning to beat too fast for him to keep up with, breathe past, because it all comes down to this conversation. The same conversation they had so many months ago that had ultimately led to him finally walking out on her, feeling like he had no other choice.

"I can't lose you again," he murmurs, watching the smile, the light in her eyes, fall away, the fingers still knotted in his shirt collar beginning to slip. "I love you too much to… I can't give you up, Kate. I never wanted to in the first place and I think I've made that pretty clear over the last few months."

"Castle," she breathes, but he isn't done, can't let her chime in now or he'll lose his nerve.

"I know you need justice, I would never ask you to let that go, and if a partner is what you need me to be, I'll be it. We'll dive back into your mother's case together and this time, we'll-"

"No," she groans, arching on her toes again to slant her mouth over his, a soft whimper of pain escaping her when she lifts her arms higher to band around his neck. "I made the wrong choice, Rick. I will find my mother's killer and I will bring him to justice, but I can't keep - I need you, Castle. I love you."

He's wordless, all of his carefully crafted speeches and arguments having abandoned him at the sudden assault of her mouth, the closeness of her lips now, her nose nudging his and their lashes twining together.

"You didn't give me up," she mumbles, a sad smile claiming her mouth. "Other way around."

Castle places his hand on her waist, grazing his thumb to the sharp bones of her hips, glides his palm up her side, up to the expanding branches of her ribcage, covering the incision scar, and Beckett licks her lips.

"I'll never be the person I want to be until her case is put to rest," she confesses and he feels his heart begin to sink, but Kate cups his face in her hands, holding his head above the rising sea of disappointment. "But when I'm with you, I'm close. I'm more. And when I do find her killer, I want you with me. I want it done right."

"And safely," he croaks out, clearing his throat, but he means it, can't survive holding her body as she bleeds out again.

"Safely," she agrees, as if she can read the memory in his eyes. "It'll be different this time."

"Better," Castle mumbles, his lips whispering at the corner of her mouth, and she steals the flowers from his grasp, places them delicately on the table near the entrance and drags him deeper inside. "Need me to check for more spiders?" he teases when she begins walking backwards, leading him towards her bedroom.

Kate's eyes flicker with amusement, flames of arousal that he hasn't seen in so long, and he can't help stumbling a little.

"Not this time, Castle."


	14. Chapter 14

_"are you? sabotaging? my dates?!"_

* * *

The first time it happens, Kate doesn't think anything of it. Castle had returned to the precinct in the fall, after they had parted ways in the summer over a falling out in his Hamptons home.

She had accepted his offer to spend Memorial Day weekend with him, to swim in the ocean and lounge on the sand, sit beside him in the cool night air and watch fireworks illuminate the sky. And when he had kissed her on what was supposed to be her last night in the luxurious guest room before she drove back to the city the next morning, a two day trip had turned into a week long vacation from work. Seven full days of sun kissed skin and hours spent tangled with him in his high thread count sheets, and so much laughter, too many smiles to count.

She still can't recall a time in the last ten years where she has felt so consistently, genuinely happy.

Throughout the summer, she manages to drive up to his place as often as she can, sometimes earning the surprise of him showing up in the city with a steaming cup of coffee for her already on her desk.

"Castle, you're supposed to be writing," she had chastised him in the break room on that scorching July morning, flickering her gaze to the closed blinds before stepping closer, fingering the collar of his shirt, flirting with the tanned skin beneath.

"Come on, Beckett," he had whined, leaning in to steal a kiss from her mouth that had tasted like salt air and bittersweet caffeine. "You've been inspiring me all summer. I'm actually _ahead_ of schedule for once. I can spare a day off."

He _had_ been ahead of schedule, so much so, that his publisher had actually called to praise him for a change while he was lying on the chaise lounge with her beside the pool during her final visit to the Hamptons in the middle of August. She could hear every word Gina was saying to him through the speaker of the phone, the pleasant surprise in her voice as she'd gone over the recent chapters Rick had sent her.

And Kate had grinned at him from behind the shades of her sunglasses, indulging in what had once been a secret source of pride for him. But it's the comment that his second ex-wife makes that isn't so pertinent to his writing that wipes the smile clean from her face.

 _I suppose it was for the best that I didn't accept your offer to go to the Hamptons after all._

Castle had gone still and so had she, lowering her glasses to stare back at him in question, but the dread had already begun to leak into her stomach, the realization.

"You asked Gina to come with you?"

"Uh, Gina - thanks but - ah, no, I'll call you back. Kate-"

She had already risen from the chair, feeling too exposed in the bikini she'd been stupid enough to buy ( _for him_ ), and escaped through the French doors he had left open, stalking through the house for the stairs.

"Kate, let me explain-"

"Explain?" she had snapped when he'd jogged up the stairs after her, turning on the second step from the top to glare down at him. "What's there to explain, Castle? I turned you down, and you asked another woman to come with you the second I did."

"You were with Demming," he'd pointed out. "You'd said no-"

"And you acted like it mattered to you," she had scoffed, all of the bright and wonderful light that had breached her chest over the last two months going dark. "You never cared if I accepted the offer, as long as you had _someone_ , right?"

The wounded look that had consumed his face, bled through his eyes, stuck with her, haunts her during the nights she spends alone in her apartment, and yeah, maybe it had been a little low of her, an unfair blow, but he'd hurt her and it had been her first instinct to hurt him back.

"Kate."

She had shaken her head at him, something in her heart splitting open. "You made me think - I thought you'd changed. That you - we were different."

"We _are._ You are," he'd protested, reaching for her, but Kate had turned her back on him, climbed the last of the stairs and strode for the master bedroom where her overnight bag and clothes were. "Seriously? The first bump in the road and you're done?"

Beckett had grit her teeth, tugged a t-shirt on over her head and slid on a pair of jeans.

"Fine. You think I enjoyed seeing you with Demming, hearing about how you two were going to spend a romantic weekend away? That it was easy for me when I was – while I had feelings for you too?" he had questioned while she shoved what little she'd brought with her back into her travel bag. "Maybe I wanted to hurt you like you hurt me."

They were more similar than she'd like to admit at times.

Kate had stood up straight, stared back at him with a hollowness that she felt spread from her chest to her eyes.

"Well done."

It was another month after that before she saw him again, before she'd had to _arrest him_ , interrogate him, and then accept him back into their dysfunctional partnership. Being around him again has been a difficult adjustment, the longing in his eyes causing each breath to ache, the banter that returned to them so naturally accompanied by the sensation of razor blades shredding along her insides, the 'what could have been's a constant companion each night she went home without him.

And after a disastrous summer, three weeks of working with Castle again, their relationship strictly platonic, she doesn't say no when the attractive heart surgeon with the shared interest in Harley Davidsons asks her out on a date.

She has no idea how Castle finds out, but on the day of her first date with Josh Davidson, Rick calls her before she can even begin preparing for the night out at a fancy restaurant, seeking her advice for a dilemma concerning Alexis and her new boyfriend's pet rat. She ends up having to cancel her evening with Josh to crawl around the floor of the loft, searching for a rodent with his daughter and the man who still made her heart throb with soreness.

Her date with Josh eventually does take place when he comes to pick her up from work on his bike, but halfway through dinner, Castle calls her with imperative information on the case and she has to apologize to the man sitting across the table, promise to make it up to him with a rain check date, and rushes off to meet her ex. Something she notices isn't exactly lost on the intelligent doctor.

The third time, it finally dawns her.

She trudges out of her apartment - where she had actually been enjoying an impromptu movie date with Josh, where she had actually been able to fathom a relationship with someone who wasn't Rick Castle - to meet him at The Old Haunt upon his insistence that he had made an important discovery.

"This better be important, Castle. Josh and I were just-"

"Josh?" he echoes, disdain drenching his tone, screwing his lips into a twisted frown as if he's just tasted something sour.

Kate pauses in the middle of the secret office space they had discovered, glancing over her shoulder to narrow her gaze on him.

"Yeah, we were watching a movie at my place. It was the longest date we've managed to get through," she informs him, cataloguing the hints of irritation flickering through his features, the sudden stiffness settling on his shoulders. "Is this what you called me here for, Castle? To interrogate me about my date?"

"Obviously my call was more important than your boyfriend if you were willing to leave him in your bed to meet me."

Indignation flares hot and wild through her chest and Kate spins on her heel to glare at him. "First, he is not my boyfriend. Second, it is none of your concern _whom_ I have in my bed. And third, you did this on purpose, didn't you?" she demands, perching her hands on her hips and stepping forward, sending him a step backwards. "This entire time… you've been sabotaging my dates, haven't you?"

Rick squares his jaw tight, one of his tells that she had learned early on, and Kate growls, thrusts her hands forward to shove him against the wall.

"You son of a bitch-"

Castle catches her by the biceps, squeezing her muscles hard. "I'm not sorry. I can't be."

"Well, at least you can admit that, you jackass," she spits out, yanking her arms from his grip, but Rick doesn't release her.

He spins them both around, using the upper hand of his strength to maneuver them without issue, pin Kate to the wall with his knee in between her legs. She gasps in surprise, at the sudden friction the once welcome pressure his thigh provides her with.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, causing her to go still for a split second, to forget the harsh bloom of heat through her stomach, the fury still spreading through her chest, the sincere cerulean of his eyes giving her no choice. "I'm sorry for inviting Gina to the Hamptons when you turned me down, for acting like a scorned little boy-"

"Stop," she breathes, squeezing her eyes shut, because she doesn't want to do this, doesn't want to rehash it-

"It was unfair to her and to you and I'm sorry that it made you think you're anywhere near replaceable, that I was more focused on holding my pride instead of apologizing the day you found out. I'm sorry that I let you leave, Kate. I wanted nothing more than to go after you-"

"Then why didn't you?" she hisses, her eyes flaring open, the demand surprising them both, but Beckett swallows hard, takes a deep breath. "You pissed me off and I ran, because yeah, it - it made me feel like I was just another body to keep your bed warm-"

"Kate," he sighs, mournful, but she shakes her head. She isn't looking for an apology, doesn't want one, not anymore.

"So maybe we both handled it badly and I'm sorry too, for running, not letting you explain, but I didn't expect you to just keep your distance, not see you again until I had to arrest you for murder. Since when do you give me my space?"

She expects a quirk of his lips, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, but Castle's gaze is pained, the line of his mouth tight and hesitant.

"Rick?"

"I just thought that whole 'if you love someone, let them go' thing might apply in that situation, but apparently, not so much."

She's suddenly so very glad his body is partially keeping hers upright, because her knees threaten to give while her heart goes still.

 _Love someone_? But he didn't - he can't - how-

"Don't pass out on me, Beckett," he chuckles, but oh, his voice is trembling as badly as her hands are. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have - I was an ass to ruin your dates, you don't belong to me and I had no right, I just-"

Her shaking fingers rise to cup his face, drag his mouth down to meet hers, to seal in all of her panic, suffuse her with the warmth of his lips over hers.


	15. Chapter 15

_"we keep showing up at all the same places separately because we've always had similar interests."_

* * *

"Are you doing this on purpose?" she huffs and Castle glances up to find Kate Beckett standing at the head of his table, her arms crossed and an eyebrow arched.

"Detective Beckett, what a wonderful surprise," he replies with a grin, watching her irritation bubble. "Running into you so often these past few weeks has been fun, but no, I'm simply here for a milkshake."

"During my lunch hour," she points out, but Rick merely shrugs. He really hasn't meant to keep running into her here at the diner, inside a multitude of coffee shops they once frequented together, during morning jogs he's taken to enduring in parks they both apparently favor.

But he can't say he's not glad to see her every time their paths inadvertently cross, can't stop the stumble of his heart, the mixture of yearning and relief just to see her still alive and breathing.

There was no one protecting her now, no insurance between Smith and Montgomery to cover her, and without him to lead her away from her mother's case, not since she had learned of that truth two weeks ago, stormed out of his apartment with tears and betrayal in her eyes, streaming down her cheeks.

He doesn't just miss her; he's afraid for her.

"Used to be my lunch hour too. "

"Rick, I'm meeting someone here and I need you to-"

"Meeting someone?" he echoes, staring up at her with both a twist of jealousy and a knot of dread forming in his stomach, because a meeting can only mean one of two things.

She's either found someone new in the short time they've separated or – the more likely scenario – she's consulting with a connection to the main reason they broke up, someone involved in her mother's case, ready to lead her even closer to the slaughter.

"I don't have a lot of time," she answers instead, glancing to his half finished chocolate shake that suddenly tastes like dust on his tongue.

"Do you remember what happened the last time you met an informant like this, Beckett?" he inquires, the scowl on her lips deepening.

"I know what I'm doing," she states, but her eyes roam the inside of Remy's, lingering on the windows.

Castle purses his lips, because no, she doesn't. She has no idea what she's doing because she's got those damn blinders on that keep her from seeing how careless she's being in her desperate pursuit of a new lead.

"Then let me wait with you," Castle tries, gesturing to the empty space of the booth across from him.

"You're not a part of this anymore," she reminds him quietly and it stings, burns to be cut out of her life like this all over again, but especially after he had become such an intimate part of it. After he had loved her so deeply, completely.

When he still does.

Castle slips from the booth to rise to his feet, but Beckett is already shaking her head and holding her hand out to stop him.

"Kate-"

"No, I can't - don't start, okay?" she whispers, her throat rippling with a thick swallow that disappears beneath the black fabric of her turtleneck.

"Beckett, this isn't _safe_ ," he growls, stepping in closer when she fails to back away any further.

"I can take care of myself," she mutters, her fingers twitching at her sides now, itching to rub at the healing wound in her chest, the bullet wound embedded between her breasts that had completely turned her world upside down, broke her. Broke them.

"I never said-"

"Detective Beckett?"

Kate's head turns to the entryway, to the man walking towards them, and no, something is already wrong, his gut flaring hot with warning.

"Matt Johnson?" she answers in return and the approaching guy nods.

"Glad you could make our meeting," Johnson states before he pulls the gun from his side, quicker than Kate can reach for hers, and Rick reacts.

"Castle, _no_!"

But he already has the man who called himself Matt Johnson on the ground, the gun knocked away, a shot echoing through Rick's ears, drowning out the screams of the diner's patrons already ducking for cover.

" _Castle,"_ Kate gasps at his back, her voice close at his ear, familiar hands tugging him off of the man who is surprisingly limp beneath him and – and a tackle to the floor couldn't have killed him, could it? Not a trained murderer like this man. "Rick, baby, can you hear me?"

Castle blinks, realizes Kate has managed to maneuver him to his knees beside the dead man and she's calling him _baby_ -

"What-"

"Esposito," she breathes at his side, her palm draping at his cheek, and there's so much worry in her eyes, fear, but he doesn't understand why. The man who raised a gun on her is dead, she's safe now, _for_ now, it's fine- "I had Esposito watching from the other building. He shot him."

"Oh," Castle murmurs, blinking again, trying to dispel the blurriness at the edges of his vision, ruining the sight of Kate beside him. "That's – that's good. Didn't want him to hurt you, Kate."

"Fuck, why did you have to be here?" she chokes out, the hand on his cheek drifting to his neck and pressing down hard, causing him to yelp-

"Ouch, _oww_ , what-"

"Johnson got a shot off before Esposito took him down," she explains quickly, her other hand rising to cradle the opposite side of his face, steadying him, but oh, his neck is _burning_. "You jumped in front of me and lunged for him and his bullet grazed your neck, but it's okay, it's okay. I promise it'll be okay."

She's crying. Even with his vision going blurry and the pain marring his concentration, he can see the tears filling and falling from her eyes, the tremble of her bottom lip and the crack in her voice, and it makes his heart hurt worse than it has been for the last two weeks.

"I missed you, Kate," he mumbles, tilting into her touch, feeling his body threatening to sway a little too far, collapse to his side. But Kate keeps him upright, moves in closer on her knees and touches her forehead to his even as sirens blare in the near distance.

"I'm so sorry, Castle," she gets out and Rick closes his eyes, blindly winds his arm around her waist and hooks his fingers in the hem of her turtleneck. "It wasn't worth it. Wasn't worth this."

"S'okay," he sighs out, his neck crackling with searing bursts of pain, but the rest of his body has gone numb, the blackness closing in. "Love you, Kate. It's okay."

"No, Castle," she whispers, the stroke of her thumb to his cheek the last sensation he feels before he finally lets go. "It's not okay."

* * *

When he wakes the first time in the back of an ambulance, Kate is sitting beside his head, her fingers combing through his hair, lulling him back to sleep, away from the tugging agony in his neck.

"Beck," he breathes out, unable to conjure up the second syllable of her name, and Kate leans in, the tips of her hair grazing his cheek while her lips form words against his temple. Words he just can't stay awake long enough to untangle from the cobwebs consuming his brain.

The second time, he opens his eyes to see her curled up in the chair next to his hospital bed, the bleed of nightfall leaking through the blinds of the window, shedding starlight on her sleeping frame, coaxing him back into a medically induced slumber. But third time is the charm and when Castle awakens that same morning, Kate is awake too, watching him, clinging to his hand.

"Hey," she rasps, mustering a sad smile for him, and Rick squeezes her hand.

"We've got to stop meeting like this, Beckett," he croaks, humming appreciatively when she rises to retrieve a cup of water from the bedside table, offer him the straw and a few sips of the cold liquid to soothe his throat. "It's looking kinda impossible for us to stay away from each other."

Kate sighs, tired but managing an amused quirk of her lips for him. "Mm, makes me think it was a bad idea to separate in the first place."

"I concur to this," he mumbles without missing a beat and she chuckles, a pitiful little sound that tugs at his heart, has him forgetting all about the flares of pain in his neck. "Too hard being away from you, Beckett. You're not easy to miss."

"Wish you could have missed me yesterday," she murmurs, stroking her thumb along the path of his knuckles. "Wasn't diving in front of a bullet for me once enough for you?"

Castle sighs softly, careful not to feed the dull roar of pain along the side of his throat where a bullet had apparently grazed a kiss to his flesh.

"I'd do it again."

"Castle," she rasps, her eyes a reproachful shade of dulled amber, but he squeezes her fingers.

"I love you," he states, knowing it's all he needs to say, the only explanation necessary, but never enough. It'd never be enough for her, would it?

Kate bows her head to their tangled hands, inhales a deep, shuddering breath, and he had made his decision, stood firm in it for an entire 17 days, but he just… he loved her. Loves her too much. And if following her down the rabbit hole is the only way to have her-

"Your lead was a dead end, I know, but we'll look at this from another angle, dig into a different area of-"

"What?" she startles, lifting her head to stare at him with wide, bewildered eyes.

"We broke up because I tried to stop you from investigating your mother's case, tried to figure it out on my own so you wouldn't have to," Castle mumbles, the shame still heavy like a stone in his stomach over it all. She could be obsessive, a danger to herself, but he had lied to her, with good intentions, but still a lie nonetheless. "But we're always better together, Kate. So we'll do it together if you'll let me-"

"No, no, we're not going to - God, Rick, you just got _shot_. The last thing I care about is the case right now," she informs him with incredulity flaring gold in her eyes.

"But-"

"No, shh, I'm not-" Beckett scrapes a hand through her hair, her fingers trembling and catching in the strands, but she's rising from her chair, transferring onto the edge of the hospital bed to sit beside his hip and hold his eyes. "I just want you. More than anything else."

"Kate," he sighs, but her mouth forms a firm line as she withdraws her hand from his to graze her fingers to his jawline. "It's not an ultimatum."

"No, it's a choice," she murmurs, the tips of her fingers trickling to dust along the bandage consuming the left side of his neck. "We'll figure out the rest, the case, but I'm _tired,_ Castle. I'm tired of going home every night and staring at old case files and index cards and trying to find a connection that just isn't there yet. I'm tired of this consuming everything when I know it isn't what my mom would want. And I'm tired of not - not having you," she confesses on an exhale, her eyes falling to his chin, lashes shielding her gaze. "Only seeing you when I catch you stalking me."

"I was not _stalking_ you," he protests, but her lips quirk and her eyes cut to his slyly with a glimmer illuminating her irises.

"Mm, not the point," she hums, chuckling softly at his exasperated huff of a response.

"Tell me the point," he sighs, catching her fingers at the collar of his hospital gown and dragging them to his chest, watching her own hitch ever so slightly at the rest of their digits over the thrum of his heartbeat.

But Kate splays her palm flat beneath his, sealing her hand to his sternum. "The point is that I thought I lost you in the diner. There was so much blood, so much…" Beckett shakes her head and swallows, presses her palm down a little harder over his heart. "And I hated myself for being the reason, hated you for not leaving me alone-"

"That's nothing new," Castle states with a smirk, injecting a touch of levity to the moment that has her eyes rolling, but still failing to meet his.

"I _can't_ lose you, Rick. I know I said that we were done, but-" He watches her bite her bottom lip, the words climbing her throat thicker now, heavier as they crawl past her lips, and for once, he stays silent, brushes his thumb back and forth over one of her knuckles, but doesn't speak. "I knew we weren't."

"Course not," he replies, quiet so not to disturb the solemn tone of her admission, the weight of her truth. "We don't end, Kate. Mostly because you can't get rid of me."

The corner of her mouth quirks and she shifts forward in his bed, maneuvers herself to fit into the space between his body and the slim railing and oh, it feels so wonderful to have Kate Beckett curled up in bed with him again.

"I've noticed," she mutters, her cheek at his shoulder, her hand still holding at his heart. "Accepted it."

"Good," he murmurs with a pleased grin that he presses to the top of her head, hiding the wince the slight turn of his face evokes in her hair. "Otherwise I would have just had to keep stalking you."

She chokes out a laugh, but her eyes are serious when she lifts her head, finally meets his gaze with hers narrowed, shimmers of gold dancing through the pools of amber and green even as she tries her best to glare at him.

"You're lucky I love you."


	16. Chapter 16

_"i know you can't cook for shit so i've been bringing you dinner every night, just, y'know, to keep you alive."_

* * *

Kate squeezes her eyes shut beneath the heated spray of water at the insistent ring of her phone from its spot on the table down the hallway, the accompanying rap of a fist on her front door.

She already knows who it is, the only person who would follow her home from the precinct, the only person who refuses to leave her alone. And of course, only he would manage to show up while she's in the middle of her shower.

She twists the faucets with a little too much force, her jaw set and her teeth grit as she yanks the shower curtain open, wraps the towel around her body, and stalks out of the bathroom. She bypasses her still ringing phone, leaving wet footprints on wooden floors, and tightens her grip on her towel while she heads straight for the front door, tugs it open.

Sure enough, Rick Castle is on the other side of the door, a crooked smile on his face that falters as his gaze flickers to the exposed skin of her arms, her legs, her chest, her entire body still dripping with water and threatening to shiver in the cool air of her apartment. Not because of him. No, she was done allowing her body to respond to him.

Not that it often chose to listen to her brain.

"Oh, I brought you dinner," Castle quips when she arches an eyebrow at him, lifting the dish in his hands and she sighs.

He's been bringing her meals for the last week, trying and failing to be surreptitious about the fact that he apparently thinks she is unable to take care of herself. Sure, she had enjoyed the home-cooked meals they had often shared, bumping shoulders and hips whenever they were together in his gorgeous kitchen, making dinner on the nights she wasn't glued to her desk or running down a lead. And maybe she sometimes became too caught up in her work, skipped a meal or two without realizing, but that didn't make her an invalid incapable of feeding herself.

"I don't need your damn casserole," she growls, but Rick shoulders his way past her, thankfully without touching her, striding inside her apartment and towards her kitchen table.

"Nonsense, Beckett," he tosses back over his shoulder, placing the dish on the surface and turning back to her with an easy grin, and she hates how the sight of him standing in her kitchen, content and at home, makes her miss him.

 _It's been a week, Beckett. Get it together._

"Besides, it's your favorite," he points out, coming towards her, and Kate sighs, shaking her head.

"Castle, you cannot keep-"

"Hey," he murmurs, lifting a hand to silence her and her brow furrows until she hears it, the sudden beeping echoing through her apartment. "What is that?"

"I don't-"

 _Goodbye Nikki. Goodbye Nikki._

They both go still for a split second at the deep monotone of the recording that causes her heart to stop, their eyes wide and locked on each other before she's lurching forward, shoving Castle down the hall, back towards the bathroom.

"Go, go, go-"

Castle slams the bathroom door shut the second the explosion shatters through her apartment, his body covering hers as they make a dive for cover, land crumpled in her bathtub. Beckett gasps at the burst of pain in her shin, her elbow when it connects harshly with the iron edge of the tub, feels more than hears Rick grunt at the bash of his skull against the faucet, but the injury doesn't slow him from banding his arms around her frame, holding her tightly against his chest.

But she can't stay like this, with her shoulder crammed against his sternum, his spine bowed like a shield over her while he takes the brunt of the damage, the bits of her ceiling falling to land on his back. Kate takes a deep breath, nearly chokes on the scent of smoke infiltrating her senses, and rolls beneath him, tries to ignore the shutter of the building around them, the deafening sounds of the blast and the pulsing thud of her heartbeat in her ears, and shifts onto her back.

Castle is balanced precariously on one elbow above her, his eyes a fierce blue in the darkness of her bathroom, flames of orange beginning to illuminate the edges, and she wraps her arms around his neck, seals her naked chest to the front of his to feel the hammer of his heart through the destruction all around them.

She grips him hard when something crashes against the claw foot tub, has him sinking lower with a sharp breath, huddling deeper into the bath with her and burying his face in her neck. Kate closes her eyes and tries to focus on the uneven staccato of his breathing, the sharp panting against her bare skin, and drapes her palm to the back of his head. It's only a matter of seconds before it's all over, but it feels like hours lying beneath him in the tub, their limbs tangled and the adrenaline overwhelming their senses.

The trembling of her building finally stops after a few long moments of her breathing against the cove of his neck, the thunderous roar quieting into the snap and crackle of flames, the whine of walls caving in, and her home succumbing to the fate of being burned alive.

Castle eases back from her with caution, the fingers he'd buried in her hair stroking back and forth along her scalp while he plants his other hand against the slick floor of the tub, hoists his upper body off of her. He's barely managed to separate from her when she notices the blood, feels it drip hot onto her bare shoulder.

"You're bleeding," Beckett breathes out, knows he can't hear her, she can hardly hear herself, but she maneuvers a hand up between them, sweeps her fingers to the gash scaling the ridge of bone above his brow.

Castle shakes his head, dislodging her hand, and lifts his head, scans his eyes above the rim of the tub.

"I think it's over," he states, his voice loud and uneven, able to penetrate the ringing in her ears but strangled by a fit of coughing that she feels building in her own lungs.

Kate pushes up onto her elbows, peering past the edge of the bathtub while Castle shoves the bathroom door from where it had landed atop the bottom of the tub, rises to his knees. She had lost her towel somewhere along the sprint to the bathroom, her body bare and slick with water and ash, and she feels Castle drape his coat over her shoulders, help ease her arms through the sleeves. But she can't manage to thank him; she can't think past the fact that her apartment has become an inferno.

"Come on, Kate," he murmurs in her ear, his lips to the shell. "Let's get you out of here."

"You too," she answers thoughtlessly, finally returning her gaze to find his inches away, the concern in his eyes almost rivaling the flames engulfing her home, and they have to go, have to get out of here before it's too late, but Kate drops her forehead to rest against his for just a second, breathes past the smoke and ash in her lungs.

Too many words crowd her tongue, too many things she wishes she had said sooner, wants to say now, but can't manage to find her voice when she needs it most. But Castle doesn't question her, doesn't stare back at her in confusion; he curls his large palm at her neck, strokes his thumb over the throb of her pulse until she's ready to stand.

He seems to know without having to ask.

"I'm with you, Kate."

She ends up going home with him the following night, back to the loft where she's lucky a few of her clothes had yet to be retrieved from his closet, and stays up with him, drinking hot chocolate and rolling her eyes as he boasts about how his casserole had actually saved her life.


	17. Chapter 17

_"I've seen you hanging around my apartment and I thought it was because you were missing me, turns out you were using my wifi you asshole."_

* * *

She doesn't have to sense him to know when Castle is nearby, the slow of her internet connection is enough of an alert.

Kate growls at the snail speed in which the attachments in her email work to load, shoves her laptop from her thighs and gets to her feet, trudging to the window in her bedroom that looks out onto the street below. And sure enough, there he is, leaning against the brick of her building with his phone in his hands, this thumbs moving quickly and-

The chirp of her phone from the edge of her bed has her huffing, turning on her heel to snag the device, read the message illuminating her screen.

 _You're looking gorgeous tonight, Detective._

She releases a frustrated groan, tosses the phone back to her bed and almost follows its descent to the mattress. The first couple of times she had caught him loitering on the sidewalk outside her building, she had thought it was safe to assume he just missed her.

They've only been apart for a few weeks and prior to their breakup (if you could call the severing of a friends with benefits arrangement a 'breakup'), he had stayed at her apartment too many times to count, overjoyed at the prospect of being allowed in her home, pressing her up and pinning her down against every flat surface (well, no, the small set of stairs by her book collection hadn't been flat) and spending too many nights in her bed. And she misses him here, in her space, as much as she hates herself for it.

But he had done the one thing she had told him not to do. He'd looked into her mother's murder, cleaved her heart in two when he had approached her in the hospital during her brief check-in on Will after the man was shot because of her. He'd betrayed her trust and disregarded her feelings, all of her carefully sealed scars, every soft spoken word she had whispered to him on the rare nights she allowed him to stay, to sleep beside her until the sun crested on the horizon.

She had let him hold her body close, hold her heart in his hand, and he had crushed it like shattered glass.

But just like he had dredged up her past for the sake of his own interest, his own selfish curiosity, he lingered outside her building for the only connection he had left to her this summer.

His phone must still connect to her WiFi automatically and she keeps forgetting to change the damn password.

 _Stop stalking me and stealing my wifi, you creep._

He texts back far too quickly.

 _Open the door._

Kate glances up from the phone in confusion, just in time to hear the knock on her front door. She starts for the window, finding the space he had occupied below vacant, and she closes her eyes, attempts to take a deep breath before she storms out of her bedroom for the door.

She's never going to get rid of him, is she?

Beckett swings the door open, but doesn't invite him in, doesn't offer him anything more than the most menacing glare she can manage.

"Castle. Leave."

"I can't," he shrugs, the smirk on his lips boyish and charming, but the lines surrounding his eyes tell a different story, the dimness of what had once been an electric blue a disconcerting shade of grey.

She's seen him lurking outside, but this is the first time he's shown up on her doorstep and she's actually opened the door, the first time she's seen him face to face since she told him they were done and walked away from him for the last time.

"Can't you just find someone new to annoy? Someone else's past to dig into? Another story to tell?" she demands in exasperation, needing him gone, out of her life so she can focus solely on sewing back the stitches he'd ripped open. But Castle looks taken aback by her words.

"I don't _want_ anyone else," he answers, arguably the most sincere she's ever heard him sound, and Kate swallows hard, clenches her fingers hard around the doorjamb. "There's no other story, no - just you, this-"

"No," she snaps, dropping her hand from the door and unthinkingly giving him an opening. "There is no _this_ , you and I are done. In every way possible."

Castle deflates, his eyes beseeching her and the frown of his lips falling deeper. "Kate, please just listen to me-"

"Listen to you? You - you ruined it," she gets out, every open wound inside her chest peeling back, flushing with salt and stinging harshly. "Did you ever even _think_ that maybe I didn't want to know? That the thought of catching my mom's murderer only to watch as he cuts some deal that puts him out on the streets in ten years makes me _nauseous_? Did you ever think of anyone but yourself-"

"No," he cuts in, stealing all of those sharp words she had intended to throw at him, leaving her speechless and confused as she watches him exhale and hold fast to her gaze with so much need in his. "I didn't. You're right, I was selfish and I thought I was doing the right thing, but I disrespected your wishes, I violated your trust and opened old wounds that I knew would hurt you, and I didn't consider any of that until it was too late. And I'm sorry."

Something in her cracks – her defenses, her resolve, her restraint.

"What I did was wrong and if - if you want me to go, to leave you alone, I will. I promise you that, Kate, but if we're not going to see each other again, then you deserve to know… I'm very, very sorry."

He turns to go and for a moment she lets him, lets him walk down her hallway with his shoulders slumped and his head down, not expecting her to change her mind. Genuinely defeated.

"Rick."

Castle slows before he can reach the stairs, glancing over his shoulder in silent question, turning back around when she doesn't speak, simply waits.

She's in a t-shirt and yoga pants, her feet bare, and Kate arches on her toes once he's standing in front of her again, snags the collar of his shirt with her hands and kisses him hard, bruising and punishing and desperate. His arms band tight around her waist, hauling her body in close against him until she can feel every curve, contour, and bone, every pounding throb of his heartbeat.

"Does this mean - am I forgiven? Do you-"

"Stop talking," she mumbles, biting his bottom lip, stroking with her tongue. "Come inside. Not forgiven just yet."


	18. Chapter 18

_"i know we've been broken up for a while but i still have those concert tickets and you're the only person i want to share this with."_

* * *

Castle slows to a stop in front of her door, releases a deep breath he's been holding since he boarded the plane (hell, since he bought the plane ticket) before he summons the courage to knock. He shouldn't be here, should be giving her space, seeking his own, but it's been nearly three months since he's seen her last (well, nine weeks and three days – still too long), and really, his reason for coming tonight is a necessary one.

He can hear the click of her heels on the hardwood floors inside as she approaches the front door after his three unsteady knocks to the surface, can hear the moment she realizes who's on the other side as she comes to a stuttering halt. But the locks shift and click and a second later, Kate Beckett is easing open the front door of her DC home, assessing him with a frown slashed across her lips and a crease in her brow.

"Castle?" She states his name like a question and Rick tries to muster a smile for her, doesn't think he's very successful if the ripple of concern through her murky brown eyes is any indication.

"Hey," he tries for cheerful, for casual, as if he isn't still heartbroken and devastated over her.

"Hey?" she returns, her head tilting to the side in continued confusion, the waves of her hair tumbling over the shoulder of her sophisticated blazer. "How – what are you doing here?"

Rick swallows, hopes she can't notice his nerves in the persisting dimness of the evening light.

"Listen, I know we've been broken up for a while now," he begins, watching one of her eyebrows rise, but it fails to hide the bloom of apprehension through her gaze. She probably thinks he's come to try and win her back (not that he would _mind_ if that were to happen) and wow, it hurts to see on her face how much the idea of that terrifies her. "But I still have these-" Castle withdraws his purpose for coming from his jacket's inside pocket and holds the two concert tickets out for her to see. "They were non-refundable and I didn't know anyone who'd want to take them off my hands, but personally, I still want to go and there's no one else I'd rather share the experience with."

Kate hasn't managed to avert her eyes from the tickets, the troubled furrow of her brow only continuing to deepen.

"You – you flew all the way out here to ask me to come with you to a concert?" she gets out, something like grief clogging her voice, not even surprised.

"Well," Castle shrugs, lowering his hand to his side and forcing her to finally look up, meet his eyes. "It's – was our favorite band. And – and friends go to concerts together all the time, so I just thought we could too."

"I – I'm not dressed," she murmurs, scraping a hand through her hair and glancing down at her work attire. She still made a gorgeous FBI agent.

"Show's not for another hour and it's a short drive," he points out, tampering down his hope before it can rise. He hates feeling hopeful these days; it only makes the inevitable letdown hurt worse. "I can wait, if you want."

 _I'm still good at that._

Beckett bites down on her bottom lip, chews on the flesh contemplatively, and Castle has to cast his gaze to the ground before his blood overheats.

"Okay," she decides, reluctantly, and opens the door wider for him to come inside. "But it's not a date."

"Come on, Beckett," he teases, stepping inside and surveying what had once been a familiar space for him to coexist with her in. It has a strange form of sorrow spilling through his chest to realize that the place looks almost exactly as it had the last time he was here – a maze of boxes still consuming the majority of her living room, the walls still bare and impersonal, the entire house blank and depressing. "We went on plenty of 'not date' dates before we were even together, remember?"

Kate rolls her eyes, but his attempt at humor seems to put her at ease, the evidence that they can still joke and banter a comfort, and Castle sighs in relief. He really had not expected this to go even close to well.

* * *

Richard Castle is sitting on her couch again, lounging in her home (for lack of a better word) as if nothing has changed while she gets ready to go to a concert with him, her ex-fiancé. God, what is she doing?

Kate purses her lips and paints the streak of black eyeliner along the lid of her eye, a darker shade, a more severe stroke than she would normally wear. She had forgotten all about the concert they had snagged tickets for months ago, mere days after they had moved her into the new city, the new place, when he had been trying his hardest to make DC feel like home for her. Work has taken up all of her time and she's been grateful for the long hours, the exhausting demands of the job; it's kept her mind off of Castle, off of the ache that's resided in her chest since the last time he had left her here. An ache that throbs fiercely through her sternum now.

Kate inhales a long breath through her nose and runs her fingers through her hair, tousling the locks a little before she snags her leather jacket from the door of her closet. It's been so long since she's actually gone out, late night dinners with coworkers her only form of sociable activity as of late, and it's exhilarating to spend twenty minutes getting ready like she used to on those silly date nights he always imposed. It's exhilarating just to have him here again, if she's being honest.

It's also terrifying.

But Beckett faces down monsters for a living, she can attend a concert with the man she used to love. Still loves.

Shit, she'd take the monsters over this any day.

"Ready to go, Castle?" she calls from her bedroom as she flips off the light switch, strides out into the living room to find him slumped on her couch with a novel from her bookshelf in his hands.

"I leave you alone and you resort to Patterson?" he scoffs, flipping through the competing bestseller's latest release, and Kate represses a grin as she steps forward to snag the book from his fingers, drop it on the coffee table.

"Haven't had time to read much of anything, actually," she informs him, swallowing past the lump in her throat when his eyes finally rise to see her, growing wide and electric blue, stalling him in his stand from the sofa. "We should go, if you want to be there before the opening act."

"Oh, yeah," he mumbles, shooting up from his spot and quickly sidestepping her from the door, dodging cardboard pyramids along the way. "I took a cab from the airport, so did you want to-"

"Yeah, cab's fine," she replies, retrieving her keys from her purse, locking up the door behind them as they step out onto the pavement.

She doesn't miss the stray of Castle's hands towards hers before he thinks better of it, flexes his fingers into a fist and pins his knuckles to his side. Kate sighs under her breath, shoves her hands in her pockets to ignore the tingling in her fingertips, yearning for the embrace of his familiar warmth.

Just a few hours, that's all she has to get through, and then they can both go back to being… broken.

* * *

The outdoor concert venue is crowded, but the expanse of the lawn extending from the stage offers enough space for movement, for Castle to stand beside her without having to be pressed against her. Not that he would have minded that either.

Kate – much to his pleasant surprise – is bubbling with anticipation beside him, occasionally bouncing on the tips of her toes to see above the heads of what had to be a couple of hundreds before them, to catch a glimpse of the stage. It's even more wonderful to witness once the opening act emerges, has her swaying against him, their shoulders bumping, and a smile claiming her lips as she absorbs the invigorating energy surrounding them.

But before the band they came to see takes the stage, there's one more artist, a guy with a beanie hat and an indie vibe as he begins to play his guitar, the rhythm of his songs catchy, the lyrics thought provoking.

"Oh, I love this song," Kate informs him over the dull roar of the crowd, clutching his arm when a passerby knocks into her, but even after she's righted herself, standing tall on her feet once more, she doesn't move away.

'In My Veins', of course, is the song she loves. A song about heartbreak, about being unable to let go of your lover, a song that destroys him the longer he listens, especially when the woman who comes to mind with the words is standing right beside him.

"I have to go to the bathroom," Castle states, but Kate's fingers curl into the crook of his elbow, her attention no longer on the concert happening on stage, her eyes staring up at him.

"Castle."

She doesn't speak but for the sole utter of his name, her fingers tightening in the sleeve of his jacket, and it's okay, it's fine, he can still play this off.

"What's the matter, Beckett? Want to dance first?" he attempts to tease, slipping his hand to her waist, but Kate steps into the embrace of his arm, drops her forehead to his chest and releases a hot breath against the fabric of his shirt while he's left without oxygen in his lungs. "Kate-"

"I knew this would be a bad idea," she gets out, barely loud enough for him to hear, but he catches the words, feels them glance off his cheek once she lifts her head.

"We can go," he states immediately, his hand rising of its own accord to stroke along her spine, trying to soothe, making it worse for them both. "We can just leave now, I'll drop you off at your place, and I'll-"

"I don't want you to leave again," Beckett replies, nearly shouting, having to raise her voice to be heard.

But she may as well have whispered the confession because she is the only sound his ears can hear, that his brain can register.

"You - what?"

Kate shakes her head and snakes her arms around his neck, the heels of her boots placing her just an inch away from eye level with him, but close enough to rest her forehead against his, to seal the length of her body along his for the first time in months, to tug his heart straight out of his chest.

"I hated it the first time," she admits, quieter but still loud enough for him alone to hear, and Castle splays his hands at her waist, drapes his palms at her hips and holds on. "It's just – all wrong like this."

"Is this your way of saying you miss me?" he asks, a grin crawling up to stretch across his lips, and Kate's lashes flutter against his skin as she rolls her eyes, but then she's angling her head, leaning in to ghost her mouth over his-

"Yes."

He doesn't stop kissing her until the song is over, doesn't let go of her until the concert concludes, and doesn't leave the city until she eventually decides to go with him.


	19. Chapter 19

_"soon to be divorced couple obnoxiously painting the walls wacky colors every time the other paints over it."_

* * *

"Are you kidding me?"

The slam of the door and the incredulous demand in her voice has him pausing with the paint roller in his hand, repressing a smirk as he glances over his shoulder to see Kate stalking into the living room, her eyes wide with horror and ablaze with indignation once they land on him.

"Richard. Castle." And he can't repress the grin at that, how it takes him back to the first case they worked together, how he couldn't let her go then either. "What the _hell_ are you doing?"

Castle turns back to the bared wall in front of him, now bathed in his latest choice of paint. He had picked out the ugliest shade he could find this morning at the interior design place, a gaudy yellow that'd even had him wincing as he'd spent the day coating the walls in the revolting hue. Purposely stroking his roller brush down the length of the living room walls in odd patterns and awkward angles had been a personal touch, causing the paint job to look even worse. Not a very appealing sight for potential buyers.

"Oh, this?" Castle inquires, nodding to the wall and watching the line of Kate's lips purse thinner, the irritation in her gaze flaring brighter as she nods her head in reply. "Well, I just figured that since we're selling the place, I'd increase the value with a fresh paint job. I'm thinking about adding red stripes, give the room a more vibrant-"

"Stop it," Kate snaps and the amusement drops straight from his face, drains from his system, because she's really angry with him, and _good_ ; he wants her pissed off, ready to fight, so he can fight back. "Stop trying to sabotage this."

"Like you're sabotaging our marriage?" Rick throws back at her without missing a beat, watching the words hit her like a slap to the face before she's storming towards him, her eyes on the roller still in his grasp.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," she growls, her heels clicking harshly on the hardwood floor, the snatch of her hand at his wrist quick like the strike of a viper, but Rick holds the paint tool high out of her reach.

"Then _make_ me understand," he snaps, catching her by the waist, causing them both to stumble and sway backwards, her body teetering forward to fall against his, and Castle hisses as his back hits the wall of wet paint. "Dammit, Kate, talk to me."

"I can't," she grits out, dropping her hands to his biceps to push away, to find her balance and walk away from him. Again.

He's not letting it happen again.

Castle spins them, hears her gasp even before he pins her back to the wall, relishes in the arch of her spine, the crush of her chest into his.

"You jackass," she huffs, glaring up at him, but Castle ignores the halfhearted insult, zeroes in on the brewing conflict arising in the darkness of her gaze. It's been so long since he's seen her eyes alight with color.

"I love you," he rasps, the words escaping him far more mangled and broken than he'd intended, and he tries to clear his throat, but it's no use. "I love you, Kate, and I don't know what changed, what made you change your mind about me-"

"Rick," she chokes out, letting her head fall back against the wall, streaks of yellow staining her hair.

"If I did something," he continues, fighting to keep it together, to keep her. "But I can do better, we can work on whatever it is, and I promise I'll-"

Kate's hands on his face, cupping his cheeks, quiet him, her lips covering his, caressing his mouth and soothing the cracking thing inside his chest steal all his words.

"It's not you," she gets out, ragged and with the pant of her breath burning, searing his skin. "Not you, you didn't - I love you, Castle. I love you-"

He growls, bites her bottom lip to silence her, to earn the simultaneous surge of her hips, before he bruises her outer thighs with his hands and hoists her up. Kate's legs cinch tight around his waist as her tongue delves into his mouth, paints strokes of heat through his body.

Castle draws one of his hands up to her nape, tries to gentle her with the brush of his thumb to the tender spot behind her ear, but her body rolls against him desperately, her mouth over his hungry, and any other time, he'd be happy to let her devour him. But not now, not yet.

"Then why are you giving up on our marriage, on me?" he demands, gasping for breath when she pulls back to finally look at him, her lips swollen and her eyes glittering.

Beckett shakes her head and softens her grip on him, cradles his face and expels a deep breath, as if she's been holding it for a very long time. Since she had chosen to leave him without reason a near month ago, served him with divorce papers that had cleaved his chest in two a week later.

"Because I thought the best way to love you was to protect you," she whispers, tears spilling over to stain her cheeks, dripping down her chin at an alarming speed.

His heart skips in the worst way, his guts forming knots, and Castle narrows his gaze on her, feels the dilapidated muscle sink further at the wave of guilt overtaking her features.

"Kate."

"I'll tell you everything," she relents on another long, withheld exhale. "I don't want to - I can't do this anymore. Not have you."

He's hurt, angry and confused, betrayed, but his wife is wrapping her arms around his neck, dropping her forehead to rest against his in a form of intimacy he's so greatly missed, and Rick eases her away from the wall, sighs in relief at the coil of her body around him, the drape of her chest and tender curl of her limbs enveloping his frame.

"You have me," he murmurs, turning away from the devastated wall and starting towards their bedroom, the adjoining en suite with Kate in his arms. "I have you."

She hums her affirmation and lifts her head, dusts her lips to his brow, the corner of his eyes, relearning all of her favorite spots to touch. "Yeah, you do. Rick?"

He carries her through his office, their room, unable to help the twitch of his lips when he catches sight of her in the mirror, has to bite back the laugh. She is _covered_ in that god-awful color. But Kate merely chuckles once she's followed his gaze towards the glass, witnessed the unfortunate state of her hair, their clothes, their skins.

Her eyes return to his a moment later, though, lock onto his gaze with a fierce intensity that sends hope flooding through his veins, tending to his wounds.

"We're painting over that damn wall."


End file.
